Foreign Policy > China

Has America Lost The Strategic Game In The South China Sea?

Is this Chinese takeover the new reality? Or, can a coordinated effort by the U.S. and its allies challenge China’s hegemony in the region?

Janet Levy | June 16, 2026

The Iran war and the fight for control of the Strait of Hormuz—through which vital oil cargo from Gulf countries feeds the global economy—is a reminder that America must not forget the South China Sea, another strategic region where China, a greater threat than Iran, has gained alarming control over many decades.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has blatantly seized key points in the region and built a fortified military presence by constructing artificial islands on partially or fully submerged coral reefs in disputed waters. Today, the U.S. finds itself seeking permission to transit one of the world’s most critical trade routes, through which over 20% of global maritime trade (about $5.3 trillion annually) flows.

China claims the entire South China Sea—from Singapore and the Strait of Malacca in the southwest to the Taiwan Strait in the northeast—as its territory. This outrageous claim draws on ancient maps and takes the form of a U-shaped broken line (marked in green here), variously known as the Nine-, Ten-, or Eleven-Dash Line. Taiwan, Vietnam, and the Philippines have vehemently protested, and a tribunal under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, to which China is a signatory, ruled in 2016 that China’s claim has no legal basis.

Despite that, the Chinese advance in the region shows no sign of abating. This is because control of the South China Sea will enable greater power projection along the First Island Chain (marked in red here), which extends from Japan and Taiwan to Borneo and serves as a gateway to the greater Philippine Sea and the Pacific Ocean. It’s the very basis of Sino-American competition in the Indo-Pacific, where China has gained greater leverage, military power, and economic lifelines, and has installed vast military resources.

As recently as the 2010s, China controlled virtually no land in the region. But it now has an almost 8,000-acre network of island military bases. These bases are equipped........

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