evidence: Message from Ambassador Robert F. Godec on the 92nd Birthday of Her Majesty Queen Sirikit The Queen Mother [...] On April 1, Beijing declared a new maritime law enforcement campaign called "Blue Sea 2020." Its announced purpose was to "enhance marine environmental protection," but its real purpose was suggested a day later, when a PRC ship sank a Vietnamese fishing vessel. Beijing has bolstered its military bases in the contested Spratly Islands with new aircraft deployments and "research stations," dispatched an energy survey vessel and armed flotilla to intimidate Malaysian offshore oil and gas work, and provoked Indonesia by sending hundreds of fishing boats and escorts into waters off Indonesia’s Natuna Island. Beijing warned that anyone bucking its ridiculous claims to sovereignty over the South China Sea is "doomed to fail." [...] The PRC’s maritime claims in the South China Sea have no basis in international law. Some even lack any basis in reality, such as its absurd insistence that James Shoal is the southernmost tip of China. James Shoal, which is more than 1,000 miles from China, is fewer than 50 miles from Malaysia—and 70 feet underwater, so it isn’t territory at all. Beijing’s sovereignty claim appears to derive from an old British atlas and a translation error suggesting the underwater shoal was actually a sandbank above the waves. It isn’t – yet Beijing continues pushing maritime misinformation.