It is hard to say that China’s President Xi Jinping isn’t consistent. Since he took office in 2013, President Xi has actively and aggressively asserted Chinese territorial claims, especially maritime ones. And while China’s construction of airfields on disputed islands in the South China Sea—over U.S. and Southeast Asian nations’ objections—was a step in the wrong direction, and the United States sailing a guided-missile destroyer within 12 nautical miles of those islands poked China with a geopolitical stick, China’s latest move can only be viewed as escalation.

http://americamagazine.org/content/dispatches/china-ups-ante-south-china-sea