Beijing’s Next Play for the South China Sea: How China Is Normalizing Its Control

Foreign Affairs | Lynn Kuok

Chinese coast guard personnel landed on Sandy Cay in April 2025, marking Beijing's first formal, on-the-ground sovereignty assertion over an unoccupied Spratly Islands feature in over a decade. This landing, alongside extensive dredging at Antelope Reef in the Paracel Islands, signals a strategic shift from maritime rights disputes to contesting and normalizing control over uninhabited land features.

These activities strain the nonbinding 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, which previously restricted claimants from occupying uninhabited features. By exploiting legal gray zones on land where sovereignty remains unresolved, China complicates the defensive calculus of neighboring coastal states like the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia. Consequently, quieter tactics such as deploying research vessels and establishing nature reserves allow the power to consolidate administrative authority without triggering direct military escalation. This incremental consolidation threatens to undermine the rules-based regional order and weakens the United States' strategy of rallying regional partners through public exposure of coercive behavior.

Comment

Beijing's extensive dredging at Antelope Reef represents a deliberate departure from the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties. By establishing permanent outposts on previously unoccupied features, Chinese forces exploit the limits of the 2016 Hague tribunal ruling, which only addressed maritime rights rather than land sovereignty. This doctrinal shift to land-based administrative consolidation creates irreversible operational faits accomplis near Thitu Island.

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