China Builds Artificial Islands in the South China Sea

By creating a new island, China could plausibly create a new bubble of Chinese sovereignty where none previously existed to help with the rest of its claims in the South China Sea.

It's all a very aggressive kind of diplomacy, something which the Chinese themselves liken back to American "Monroe Doctrine" activities in the Caribbean during the mid to late 19th century. I hope it doesn't take the Chinese as long America did to figure out that regional hegemony can be more effectively achieved by not trying to redraw lines of sovereignty and thereby inflaming nationalism.