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China believes that it has the rightful claim to a vast portion of the South China Sea, which is claimed by other countries.

You have to be willing to totally immerse yourself in China in order to have in-depth exposure to China.

The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect.

Although Shanghai is on the sea, it long lacked the prosperity that Hong Kong enjoyed, so while Hong Kong became known for its exotic ocean creatures, Shanghai built its diet around more commonplace river and sea fish.

The Chinese have figured out that they have a giant environmental problem. Folks in Beijing, some days, literally can't breathe. Over a million Chinese die prematurely every year because of air pollution.

Americans deserve to feel secure in their own lives, in their own middle-class aspirations, before you go to them and say, 'We're going to have to enforce navigable sea lanes in the South China Sea.'

The sea is my business.

A lot of Chinese don't understand why people in the West are critical of China.

I visited the Chinese side last year. The Chinese are in a constant state of military readiness. They have all their nuclear weapons in the area, presumably trained on targets across the border.

For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed for it, for all the celebrations it has been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.