Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy recruits chant slogan during a parade to mark the end of a semester at a military base of the North Sea Fleet, in Qingdao, Shandong province December 5, 2013. With a decision from an international ad hoc tribunal tasked with reviewing China's maritime claims in the South China Sea looming, regional tensions are running high. A key problem is that no nation involved in the current round of tension - not even China itself - has a crystal-clear view of what exactly Beijing is trying to achieve in the South China Sea. That's because three different schools of thought are each struggling for dominance in Chinese analytical and policy-making circles. A look at...
