By Dingding Chen
Despite its seeming threat, China’s activities remain peaceful and defensive in nature.
In recent months, China’s ongoing island-building activities have raised some understandable concerns and worries among other Asian nations, evidenced by many recent reports (here, here, and here). The main worry, raised by the U.S. and several smaller nations in Asia, is that such islands, when completed, could significantly strengthen China’s military presence in the South China Sea, thus giving China a big advantage in its attempt to dominate the whole South China Sea.
China offered more detailed logic for why it is pursuing these land reclamation activities on April 9, 2015. Among the many benefits of such land reclamation works, they protect China’s national sovereignty, advance marine science and research, and protect other international public goods. More importantly, what China is doing now is no different from other countries like Vietnam’s past reclamation works. Of course, China is doing it differently in terms of speed and scale, but this is because China happens to possess the resources, manpower, and technology necessary for the job. Other countries, if they had similar resources, would do just the same. In this sense, outside critics misplace their complaints by focusing on the activities themselves.
Read the full story at The Diplomat