China using excessive claims to its Exclusive Economic Zone as a way of constraining U.S. freedom of navigation

Such activity impairing the right of overflight of the EEZ is an element of China’s campaign to reshape its EEZ away from an area of limited jurisdiction focused on resource management and exploitation and toward an area of quasi-sovereign ocean and air- space. The goal of this “legal warfare” (or “lawfare”)75 is to renego- tiate the essential bargain of the Convention through a patient, persistent effort at reinterpretation.76 China views its excessive regulatory claims over the EEZ as an important component of its ability to conduct asymmetric mari- time warfare. In 2006, the U.S. Department of Defense reported to Congress that, through an orchestrated program of scholarly arti- cles and symposia, China sought to shift scholarly opinion and the view of national governments away from interpretations of the Law of the Sea that favor freedom of the seas.77