China has taken a wide technological lead to help bolster its control over much of Asia’s most contested tract of sea, an advantage that analysts say will help keep less equipped countries away from Beijing’s massive maritime claims.

Beijing showed its technological reach in the South China Sea last month when one of its naval lifeboats picked up a U.S. underwater scientific research drone 93 kilometers from the Philippines, which has a weaker navy and said it was unaware of the incident. The U.S. government protested and China – which accuses Washington of trying to contain its expansion — eventually returned the drone.

… Vietnam, which has sparred with China occasionally at sea since the 1970s, owns viable technology for use above the ocean surface but lacks China’s underwater sophistication, said Collin Koh, a maritime security research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Other claimants lag further, he said.

“The other claimants, they are more or less still stuck with the more traditional forms of surveillance such as the case of aerial and surface technology,” Koh said, “We’re faced here (with) a very a non-uniform, uneven proliferation of new technologies in the South China Sea.”