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US Sending Ships to South China Sea to Teach Beijing, Not Fight It

Ralph Jennings

   TAIPEI, TAIWAN - An unusually strong surge of U.S. Navy activity this
   month in the South China Sea shows that Washington is trying to teach
   China a set of rules for operating in contested waters, official
   statements and scholars say.

   The Navy sent two ships into the Asian sea, which is increasingly
   controlled by China but disputed by five other countries, last week
   after China sent its first domestically produced aircraft carrier into
   the same waterway for research and testing.
   Washington wants to show China that it must keep the economically and
   politically strategic sea open rather than trying to take tracts of it
   for exclusive use, the U.S. Pacific Fleet and the analysts say,
   although experts see little threat of armed conflict.
   "The United States is trying now to shape and shift Chinese behavior,
   and that's really hard," said Stephen Nagy, senior associate politics
   and international studies professor at International Christian
   University in Tokyo.
   "This comprehensive pressure is a way to start to shift the behavior of
   the Chinese in a way that doesn't spiral out it of control into some
   kind of conflict," he said.
   

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