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This is newsworthy because the island exists within an area of overlapping territorial claims. The installation of the missiles is an escalation in an ongoing dispute.

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So is NATO putting missiles into ex-Soviet states bordering Russia, but we don't see much on the new cold war with Russia on these pages.

Deploying missiles onto land that everyone agrees you own is one thing. Deploying missiles onto land that other people think they own, which could fire on planes flying over more land people disagree about, is clearly a different situation.

That said, I agree that the media under-reports provocative actions by groups we like.

Ah, you're right. Russia annexing Crimea outright and pseudo-annexing eastern Ukraine (and the resulting rise in tensions) is totally nothing like China annexing the Spratleys.

Well you say "land that everyone agrees you own" and yet that point of view was not unanimous (for example the Russians didn't think so). From the Chinese point of view, perhaps it seems like it is "land that everyone agrees [they] own".

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