China is winning the battle over ownership of the South China Sea. Blatant aggression is succeeding here as surely as it did for Putin in Crimea – and with far less historical, ethnic or geographical justification. One obvious illustration is the impunity with which China could sink a Vietnamese fishing boat as it proceeded with seizing an islet in the waters off Vietnam’s central coast and well within what to any neutral observer is clearly Vietnam’s 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone.