BRAHMA CHELLANEY
For over a decade, China has been using an increasingly aggressive hybrid-warfare strategy to increase its power and influence in the strategically important South China Sea. Countering it will be one of the defining challenges for US President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “Chinese dream” of global preeminence depends significantly on achieving dominance in the South China Sea and ending America’s primacy in the Indo-Pacific region, an emerging global economic and geopolitical hub. And China has not hesitated to use coercive tactics in service of these objectives.
In recent years, boats belonging to countries whose territorial claims China disregards, such as the Philippines and Vietnam, have faced blockades, ramming, water-cannon attacks, and even bladed-weapon assaults by Chinese vessels. Offshore energy operations endure regular harassment. Simply fishing in waters China calls its own can expose a person to a Chinese attack with iron pipes. Such violent confrontations have heightened regional tensions and undermined stability in a crucial corridor linking the Pacific and Indian Ocean.
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