China Is Taking Steps Toward Controlling the South China Sea As of several years ago, China had already reclaimed over thousands of acres of the area throughout the region, an island-building process caught on video by U.S. Navy Poseidon spy planes years ago. Here’s What You Need to Remember: The Pentagon’s long-standing opposition to Chinese phony island-building, or “land reclamation,” in the South China Sea is based upon the definition of “island” as it is explained in the U.N. Convention Law of the Sea, an international agreement negotiated in the 1980s and updated in the 1990s.