evidence: Vietnam is fast-tracking its artificial island projects in the disputed South China Sea, a move that aims to counter the People’s Republic of China (PRC), analysts say. By dredging the seabed and piling the material atop reefs in the Spratly Islands, Hanoi added more than 280 hectares of land between November 2023 and June 2024, reported the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. It’s more land than Vietnam created in the previous two years combined. [...] In defiance of international law and a 2016 international tribunal ruling, the PRC claims most of the South China Sea, including the Spratlys, a group of more than 100 strategic islets and reefs surrounded by rich fisheries and potential oil and gas deposits. The archipelago is about midway between the Philippines and Vietnam, hundreds of kilometers from the PRC mainland. The PRC’s Spratly Islands claim overlaps not only with Vietnam’s but also with those of Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan.