Their strategy is smart —building carriers takes a LONG time, and even longer to figger out how to use them.
Dredging?
Yeah, you suck up sand from over there, then dump it over HERE —just keep sucking and dumping to all hell.
Once you’ve got a real ton of those and their corresponding exclusion zones, it’s like they’re a whole bunch of super cheap, stationary carriers, and you can bug passing ships and planes AD INFINITUM.
They intend to make life for non-Chinese in the South and East China seas utter hell —permanently.
I guess the next big step will be when they shoot down either a Japanese or American recon plane.
“Their strategy is smart”
China knows that its competitors in the Spratley’s cannot afford to try and exploit the oil/gas there on their own, They would have to lease “rights” to Shell/Exxon, etc.
China though, can afford it, and has the tech readily available. Plus, they have the strategic need to localize some of it’s oil needs.
They have every incentive to do it, especially given the current US leadership., China may never have another opportunity to exploit it as they do now.
With their huge naval building program, they could afford to losea couple of older ships, to prove a point.