re: #143 Sir John Barron

The “building” part really stood out.

Yes: several of these “islands” were basically just reefs or shoals, and the Chinese (mainly via their military) have spent years of labor and a ton of money hauling rocks, dirt, concrete, etc. out to sea to literally “build” them into “islands”, and then usually built military installations on top of them.

Under the Law Of The Sea (which the US has never ratified, btw), countries’ “territorial waters” are defined by their proximity to the country: however, a nation planting new “territory” in the middle of the ocean kind of raises a bunch of questions.