China's man-made islands and military constructions in the South China Sea would be nothing more than a "sitting duck" for US armed forces in the event of a naval conflict, say both American and Chinese experts.
In interviews with the US-based outlet Defense News, Ian Easton, a China defense specialist at the Project 2049 Institute in Washington; Wallace Gregson, a former assistant defense secretary for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs, and Zhu Feng, a South China Sea expert at China's Nanjing University, all agreed that China's rapidly expanding land reclamation efforts and militarization on disputed islands in the South China Sea "would not survive long in a war with the US."
As such, claims by the US that China's reclamation program is a military effort should be dismissed as nothing more than "consipracy theories," said Zhu, who added that Washington is simply being paraoid and "overplaying" the activities and should not see it as a "creeping provocation or challenge to their authority."
"If the islands are militarized they are sitting ducks to the US military, so island reclamation means nothing, changes nothing," Zhu said, warning that plans to send US warships to the region would only "raise tensions unnecessarily."
Read the full story at Want China Times