Energy, South China Sea | featured news

China recently established a larger army garrison and expanded the size of an ostensible legislature to govern a speck of land, known as Yongxing Island, more than 200 miles southeast of Hainan. The goal of that move, Mr. Wu said, is to allow Beijing to “exercise sovereignty over all land features inside the South China Sea,” including more than 40 islands “now occupied illegally” by Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia.

The United States and China signaled a willingness on Thursday to work together on "sensitive issues" in a move to cool tensions between rival claimants to the potentially oil-rich and increasingly militarized South China Sea.