That’s the so-called cabbage strategy that China is employing to stake its maritime territorial claims, and a ranking Chinese military officer says his country should take more disputed territory from the Philippines, The New York Times Magazine has reported.
Quoting Maj. Gen. Zhang Zhaozhong of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the Sunday magazine cover article said China began taking measures “to seal and control” areas around Panatag or Scarborough Shoal, which the Chinese call the Huangyan Islands, following a standoff with the Philippines last year.
The magazine article, quoting Zhang, reported that the cabbage strategy involved “surrounding a contested area with so many boats – fishermen, fishing administration ships, marine surveillance ships, navy warships.” The island “is thus wrapped layer by layer like a cabbage,” Zhang reportedly said in a television interview given in May.