Is the South China Sea a military springboard for Beijing?

share_windows This article appeared in South China Sea NewsWire on January 31 2026.

China’s military activities and deployments in the South China Sea are often framed as part of its growing power projection capability, potentially a launch pad for its ambitions in the wider Indo-Pacific or beyond. However, it is worth interrogating what kind of power China could realistically project by controlling the South China Sea. There is a world of difference between the ability to fire a few missiles against military vessels in one’s vicinity and being in a position to launch an amphibious invasion against a country thousands of miles away. China’s military deployments to the South China Sea suggest a much more limited, fundamentally defensive strategy.

Coast guard and blue-water navy

The China Coast Guard’s aggressive tactics in the South China Sea against its neighbors, especially the Philippines, have understandably garnered much attention. This force certainly has extensive presence in the South China Sea, and it operates a sizable fleet of corvettes equipped with respectable firepower. But these are designed for missions near-shore, not expeditions across the ocean.

The People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN) does have a growing fleet of larger, ocean-going warships. But their construction, testing, and crew training mostly happen around China’s seaboards. Beijing’s control of the reefs on the far side of the South China Sea has little relevance to this development: the PLAN’s blue-water component must stand on its own feet if it were to contest the control of sea lanes in the wider Indo-Pacific. Even if China’s other military assets based in the ‘nine-dash line’ can create a wider area where the PLAN enjoys relative safety, this zone barely extends beyond the South China Sea.

The limits of artificial islands

China has engaged in land reclamation around multiple reefs in the Spratly Islands. From about 2016, these new, artificial islands have been hosting troops, weapons, and combat aircraft.

There is certainly a legal problem here, since many of the reefs have been ruled as belonging to the Philippines by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016. But these isolated bases are hardly a game-changer in China’s ability to project military power farther afield.

Of course, China’s radars, anti-air and anti-ship missiles on those island bases, alongside land-based assets, form part of a kill-chain against unwelcome ships and aircraft. But they have ranges of a few hundred miles – enough to cover the South China Sea, but not to establish control in waterways or airspace much farther afield. It is certainly not sufficient for commanding the Strait of Malacca, a vital passage for China’s shipping. The U.S. Navy – or at least its submarines – could still blockade the Strait’s western entrance just outside of the reach of Chinese assets on those artificial islands.

Of course, China has military airfields on the artificial islands too. These islands host a total of about 90 jet fighter hangars and another 16 larger hangars across the four island-bases (three in the Spratlys and one in the Paracel Islands in the north), though some of the large hangars will need to house early warning aircraft to support effective fighter jet operations. Realistically, the PLA could fly no more than a dozen bombers from these bases.

But the airfields are sedentary targets themselves, vulnerable to attacks in a major conflict. This is likely one reason why China has not, for instance, deployed its most advanced fighter jets on those islands.

Moreover, the fighter jets have limited range. The bombers could fly far enough to launch land-attack missiles against targets as far as Guam or the military facilities in northern Australia, where U.S. bombers and marines are rotating through. But these missions would take them outside of the protective range of fighter jets and anti-aircraft systems, while delivering relatively little explosives. It would be an inefficient and potentially risky use of these prized aircraft.

The PLA could, as an alternative, deploy some of its growing stock of intermediate-range ballistic missiles on these islands and target American and allied bases that way. But this would likewise leave its valuable assets exposed at a forward position.

Submarine bastion?

By controlling the South China Sea, Beijing could create a relatively safe zone for its nuclear powered ballistic-missile submarines (SSBNs) and improve the credibility of its nuclear deterrence.

SSBNs could be vulnerable to an adversary’s hunter-killer submarines and eliminated pre-emptively. Running frequent patrols in the South China Sea and limiting the activities of the United States and its allies help mitigate this threat to China’s underwater nuclear deterrence.

China could use the naturally semi-enclosed Bohai Sea as a submarine bastion, though the South China Sea, with its more complex terrain and nosier acoustic environment, may be better suited for this purpose.

However, the South China Sea is farther away from the American mainland, potentially too far even for China’s most advanced submarine-launched missiles: with an estimated range of 5,400 miles, they would barely reach the U.S. west coast. Alternatively, if Chinese SSBNs were to use the South China Sea to slip into the Pacific, the PLAN would need to equip them with better stealth.

Even if those limits are overcome, it would simply bring China closer to parity with the United States in the nuclear balance, rather than conferring any offensive advantage.

All considered, China is well-positioned to keep adversaries out of the South China Sea, but that does not necessarily mean the ability to use the region as a springboard to mount a large-scale expedition.