"Although China is looking for stable ties with the United States it's more willing to accept bilateral and regional tensions in pursuit of its interests, particularly on maritime sovereignty issues," Clapper said. He described China's claims traced by a so-called nine-dash line — a rough boundary covering more than 80 percent of the South China Sea — as "exorbitant."
Clapper said China was still in a construction phase so it was unclear what weaponry or forces it might deploy there. He said such Chinese activities in the past year-and-a-half, combined with oil drilling near disputed islands that caused conflict with Vietnam, was a "worrying trend."
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