According to media reports, the US Navy has dispatched the USS John C. Stennis, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, to the South China Sea in the past few days.

Amid growing tensions between the U.S. and China in the South China Sea, a U.S. Navy Carrier Strike Group is now operating in the area, Navy officials confirmed. The carrier also came with the cruiser USS Mobile Bay including the destroyers USS Stockdale and USS Chung-Hoon. "The command ship Blue Ridge, the floating headquarters of the Japan-based 7th Fleet, is also in the area, en route to a port visit in the Philippines", according to the Navy Times. The Navy will continue to appear in the South China Sea regularly, Doss said. "The US has made it clear that it will deploy 70 per cent of its navy to the Asia-Pacific region under its strategy of pivoting to Asia".

The Chinese government has been investing heavily in land reclamation projects in the Spratly Islands, adding runways and what experts say are long-range radar installations on their new claims.

Navy officials confirmed that the USS John C. Stennis arrived in the disputed region on Tuesday.

"We have Chinese ships around us that we normally didn't see in my past experience", said Capt. Greg Huffman, Stennis' commanding officer. "Hence, we have joined cause with Asean in advocating the adoption of a legally binding Code of Conduct on the South China Sea", he said.

Tensions have increased over the last month after it was learned that China had placed surface-to-air-missiles on one of the Paracel Islands.

But it is the much closer South China Sea that matters most to Beijing.

"Specific actions will have specific consequences", Carter said. The worldwide rules-based system has become the oft-repeated catch-phrase for a global order dominated by the USA in which Washington sets the rules.

She then insisted that it's the USA that's sending the most advanced weaponry to the South China Sea. "By developing these islands and reefs, we will help better protect China's own interests, make China better provide public services to this region and to uphold peace and stability in this region".

"Take a look at the planes and vessels coming in and out of the South China Sea - they're mostly America's", parliament spokeswoman Fu Ying said in Chinese.

It is a foregone conclusion that China will be heavily militarizing their artificially-created islands in the South China Sea, likely resulting in a chain of invisible threat rings that overlap their way across almost the entire disputed body of water.

Washington's determination to maintain "freedom of navigation" for its warships in the South China Sea is bound up with its preparations for war with China. After all, 80% of China's oil imports pass through the waterway.

In the opaque world of Chinese politics, issues raised at the National People's Congress offer a peek at what China's leaders have in store - and it gets plenty of coverage.

A carrier strike group (CSG) is an operational formation of the United States Navy. China has called the patrols provocative. A miscalculation or mistake has the potential to trigger a conflict with bad consequences for humanity as a whole.