China's Interests and Strategy in the South China Sea by Wang Ziyuan

"China is able to continue its current 'salami tactics' and reinforce its effective control over the South China Sea through non-military means such as maritime law enforcement."

Today’s edition begins with an introduction by Andrew Chubb. Andrew is a senior lecturer in Chinese politics and international relations at Lancaster University. He is also the author of Chinese Nationalism and the Gray Zone: Case Analyses of Public Opinion and PRC Foreign Policy (2021) and PRC Overseas Political Activities: Risk, Reaction and the Case of Australia (2021). – Thomas

Wang Ziyuan of China Foreign Affairs University — the PRC's diplomatic academy — offers an intriguing and concise retrospective commentary on the South China Sea since 2010. The choice of periodisation is itself of interest, 2010 being the year that then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared a US national interest in the area, followed soon after by the Obama Administration's declaration of a "pivot to Asia". 

The year 2010 is also a date that aligns with much English-language commentary on the rising tensions in the South China Sea. Yet it is one that obscures the key change driving the dispute: Chi…