How to respond to the CCP’s Latest South China Sea Outrage

2025-04-28

Over the weekend, Chinese military personnel unfurled the PRC flag on an uninhabited Pacific reef known as Sandy Cay, then claimed to have “maritime control” and “sovereign jurisdiction” over the tiny sandbar near a key Philippino outpost. This isn’t the first time the CCP has laid claim to such South China Sea features, some of which became bastions for power-projection and controlling their undersea resources. This is, however, China’s first such incursion on Donald Trump’s watch. If ther...

This isn’t the first time the CCP has laid claim to such South China Sea features, some of which became bastions for power-projection and controlling their undersea resources.

This is, however, China’s first such incursion on Donald Trump’s watch. If there’s no push-back, there will surely be additional, and more fraught, acts of Chinese aggression in the region.

Fortunately, the United States can penalize the Chinese Communists without force by ending a May 2013 Memorandum of Understanding that gave their companies uniquely privileged access to U.S. capital markets.

This is a policy course-correction that needs to be taken anyway. Do it now.

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