Even as China’s President Xi Jinping mobilised a “people’s war” against the coronavirus, Chinese warships were busy on another front: maintaining their pressure campaign in the South China Sea, where a buildup of military activity foreshadows a new U.S.-China cold war. “There’s no apparent pause or reduction at all” in Chinese activity in the South China Sea, said Collin Koh, a maritime security expert at NTU in Singapore. “It appears to be business as usual for the PLA, and for that matter, the China Coast Guard as well.”