Hello Gambia! Beijing is searching far and wide for allies to back its grab of the South China Sea

China has a habit of making improbably grouped friends. When it held a World War 2 victory parade last year, key attendees included officials from East Timor, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and North Korea. Today Beijing is cobbling together a similarly incongruous group of nations in support of its position on the South China Sea—ahead of an upcoming ruling in an international court that isn’t likely to go China’s way. China says nearly all of the South China Sea is its territory, basing its claim partly on a nine-dash...