ABSTRACT
Beijing has demonstrated an impressively comprehensive approach to the furthering of its interests in the South China Sea, bringing a range of levers to bear. This chapter highlights the considerable range of levers available to Beijing in the prosecution of its South China Sea claims, across diplomatic, military, economic and administrative fields. It is important to note that there are also impediments to Beijing's precise control of the levers as it seeks to calibrate how assertive to be, where and when in the promotion of its interests in the South China Sea. The country's economic rise and its meteoric growth in trade with the region mean China can also utilise its extensive economic influence in its diplomacy. Many in Southeast Asia understand that their own economic development continues in part on the coat tails of China's rise, but they are also concerned to insure in security terms against the increasingly apparent economic leverage which China is developing across the region.
