SINGAPORE — China takes pride in the way science and technology have been used to modernize its armed forces.

One of the roles of the increasingly powerful Chinese military is to enforce claims to land territory, sea space, fisheries, and ocean bed energy and mineral resources. These claims are disputed with neighboring states in a zone stretching from the mountainous border with India to three seas off the coast of the Chinese mainland — the South China Sea, the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea.

A wave of Chinese nationalism has accompanied Beijing's attempts to recover areas it says were illegally taken away when the country was weak, and to create a strong maritime security cordon. But in the fervor, China appears to have forgotten one of the fundamental laws of physics — for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.