Beijing expected to test Trump’s threshold for provocation in South China Sea

The South China Sea appears set to heat up this year as US President Donald Trump’s administration considers its options.

During the campaign and the presidential transition, in addition to questioning the United States’ one-China policy and lambasting Beijing for its trade practices, Trump touched on the contested waterway.

In December, after his unprecedented decision to accept a phone call from the president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, Trump took to Twitter to complain that Beijing didn’t “ask” the United States if it could “build a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea” – referring to the constellation of artificial islands in the Spratly Islands and its military outposts in the Paracels.

When James Mattis, Trump’s defence secretary, visited Tokyo early this month, he clarified the new administration’s South China Sea policy – mostly reaffirming what the Obama administration had emphasised.

Mattis underlined the importance of freedom of navigation above all other principles and said “the United States did “not see any need for dramatic military moves at all”.

Privately, however, Mattis hinted to Japanese officials the US would seek to pick up the pace of such operations.