[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] From shining lasers at Philippine ships in February to firing water cannons at them over the weekend, China keeps testing the limits of aggression—dialing up the notch but carefully keeping short of an outright act of war—in disputed waters like the South China Sea. Beijing’s sweeping claims to virtually all of the South China Sea were invalidated by a U.N.-backed tribunal at The Hague in 2016, but that hasn’t stopped Chinese ships from firing lasers and water cannons or performing close-in maneuvers and fleet blockades to assert territorial dominance. While such actions have prompted strong condemnation from the likes of the Philippines and other countries on the receiving end—as well as from China’s rivals like the U.S.