In an editorial for The Asan Forum, Stanford scholar Donald Emmerson portrays China’s building of infrastructure on land features in the South China Sea as a strategy to gain control over the area incrementally, without triggering actual war. He says the strategy has, so far, succeeded in large part due to Beijing’s effective use of ambiguity and because fears of unwanted escalation have tended to outweigh fears of Chinese expansion. He argues in this context that a recent incident in Indonesian waters involving China’s coast guard is unlikely to cause a significant hardening of Jakarta’s posture toward Beijing.

The full editorial may be viewed by clicking here.