U.S. says will prevent China taking over territory in international waters

A whole lot of what we buy comes through the South China Sea and not just from China. Rising labor costs in China has seen manufacturing of some things move to other Asian nations such as Malaysia and Vietnam.

If China controls the whole of the South China Sea (as they claim sovereignty over) they will be able to control all shipping through there, putting "tolls" or just harassing ships carrying goods from other nations would see prices rise and impact our economy.

China's own economy is very precarious and they don't have much value on the lives of their own citizens. Add to that the extreme nationalism that exists in the Chinese armed forces (and Chinese citizenry) it's not so far fetched to imagine tensions leading to open conflict over the South China Sea or Taiwan.

PO2 Robert Aitchison - I don't see how any of that hurts the American people.

Cynthia Croft - That's part of the problem. Given where robotics and automation are today, there is no reason to exploit cheap labor in Vietnam or Malaysia... we should be building our own goods. If China wants to place tariffs on goods, we do the same right back to them... we are still the largest market in the world.

The South China Sea is an important trade route for Chinese and Vietnamese trade. Worst case scenario, other countries reroute trade away from the South China Sea... guess who that would hurt? China. Trade from Australia, Japan, the Philippines, ect.. to the US doesn't need to pass through the South China Sea. The thing that is of the most value to the US in the region, are the resources under the South China Sea, not trade routes. I don't believe it should matter to the American people which multinational corporations pull those resources out from under the sea.

Is there any emerging major world power that doesn't want to someday be the worlds strongest nation? China will definitely become one of the worlds most powerful nations at some point, I'm not sure why that's a bad thing for the average American.

In order to sustain our current military we spend roughly 5% of GDP, if we want to remain a superpower, we had better take steps to ensure that GDP continues to grow by investing in the American people and American infrastructure instead of shipping lanes and sea bed on the other side of the planet. Someone is going to control those sea lanes and someone is eventually going to extract resources from the sea floor. It's not going to be us. If China tries to tax shipping in the region, we can tax their shipping coming into our ports.