Lee, Peter

Abstract
America is learning that the South China Sea is called the South “China” Sea for a reason, despite patriotic efforts in various nations to rename it the “West Philippine Sea” or “East Vietnamese Sea”.
At his press conference on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress, PRC Foreign Minister Wang Yi declared: “China was the first to discover, name, develop, and administer the various islands of the southern seas. Our ancestors have tilled those fields and toiled there amid hardships for generations. We know this place and love this place better than anyone else, and more than any other people we wish for the peace and stability of the southern sea and freedom of navigation.”
Wang Yi’s flowery rhetoric about China’s sole historical claim to all the islands of the southern seas and their development is ahistorical nonsense.
But the second part, about the PRC’s paramount interest and growing predominance in the South China Sea is closer to the truth. This is because the PRC is spending a lot of money, effort, and diplomatic capital to make it true.
PDF available here