China's Dubious Land Grab in the South China Sea

China’s claim of jurisdiction over pretty much the entire South China Sea boils down to this: Dudes, we’re back. That is, after a century of humiliation at the hands of foreign powers and 67 years of rebuilding since the Communists took power,1468334583368 the country is ready to reassert dominion over a body of water that has been in its sphere of influence for millennia.

As J. Bruce Jacobs of the American Enterprise Institute explained two years ago, there are a lot of questions about how much control, if any, China was ever able to assert in past centuries over an expanse of water that stretches 1,000 miles south of its southernmost coastline. But it’s definitely capable of asserting control now, so that’s what it’s been doing -- mainly, by building artificial islands atop reefs in the Spratly Islands and harassing fishermen from the Philippines and Vietnam.