A look at what a new report says about rising tensions between Washington and Beijing on a contentious issue.

A sharpening dispute between the United States and China over Freedom of Navigation (FON) in the Western Pacific was again thrust into the headlines last month following the Chinese navy’s brazen theft of an American underwater drone beyond even Beijing’s wildly imaginative Nine Dash Line, an incident I covered here at The Diplomat.

With Chinese challenges to U.S. military FON increasingly migrating to the South China Sea (SCS), last week I received a new report from the Hainan Island-based National Institute of South China Sea (NISCSS), the “Report on the Military Presence of the United States of America In the Asia-Pacific Region 2016.”

The booklet purports to offer a “systematic review of the United States’ military presence in the Asia Pacific region” and it’s largely successful in that endeavor, brimming with detailed charts, data, and infographics drawn mostly from official U.S. sources.

http://thediplomat.com/2017/01/a-closer-look-at-the-growing-us-china-rivalry-in-the-south-china-sea/