Conversations: Beijing’s South China Sea gambit

In part two of our South China Sea series, Dr Oriana Skylar Mastro speaks with the Lowy Institute’s Susannah Patton about China’s objectives in the region.

Beijing is pursuing an aggressive strategy to push out the United States and prevent Southeast Asian claimant states, especially the Philippines, from exercising their sovereign rights.

Dr Mastro, Center Fellow at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies Stanford University, Nonresident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and author ofUpstart: How China Became a Great Power, explains the military, political and legal dimensions of China’s approach, which has gone relatively unchecked by the United States and its allies, until now.