IN NOVEMBER, after months of frantic land reclamation in the South China Sea aimed at boosting its vast territorial claim there, China tried a subtler approach. It opened a think-tank in Arlington, Virginia—an outpost of its National Institute for South China Sea Studies on Hainan, a tropical (and indisputably Chinese) island on the sea’s northern shore. One role for the new think-tank is to make an academic case for China’s vaguely backed assertion that most of the strategically vital waters are within its domain—despite rival claims by South-East Asian countries.
