China’s “game of chicken” in the South China Sea hasn’t been going so well.
So it’s unleashed its Krakens.
The 12,000-ton China Coast Guard ship, widely nicknamed ‘The Monster’, has arrived in the Spratly Islands and dropped anchor alongside a Philippines cutter at Sabina Shoal.
It’s the largest coast guard vessel in the world.
But its arrival comes just weeks after Beijing deployed a new legal ‘Kraken’, a vague but powerful set of laws ignoring the territorial definitions laid out by the International Convention on the Law of the Sea.
This enables China’s coast guard to seize “foreigners and foreign ships” in any waters it deems to be its own.
Together, this represents a dramatic escalation in Beijing’s…
