ABSTRACT
The steady intensification of China's challenge to the maritime status quo helped obscure developments which would eventually prove even more dramatic. China followed up the fishing trawler incident with a carefully calibrated strategy of escalation with Japan over control of the Senkakus. Beijing sent large ships from its Fisheries Patrol, an official maritime service separate from the coast guard, for what was billed as "continuous deployment" into the waters surrounding the disputed islands. Beijing and Manila have long disputed control over the Spratly Islands, a far-flung group of tiny, mostly submerged sea formations that lie to the west of the Philippines and, by comparison, much further to the south of the Chinese mainland. Beijing sees the East China Sea and especially the South China Sea (SCS) as mainstays, however, and intends to guarantee for itself a large and possibly disproportionate share of fish production from these two regions.
