U.S.-China Showdown Keeps Inching Closer
Mark Thompson @MarkThompson_DC 5:21 PM ET
China is playing a game of chicken with the United States in the South China Sea. All signs suggest that Beijing is betting the U.S. will blink and swerve away before it comes to war. China is brazenly challenging the hegemony that the U.S. has enjoyed on East Asian seas since World War II, as the top U.S. admiral in the Pacific warns that a shrinking U.S. military is leaving him without sufficient forces to counter the rising superpower.
While the U.S. has repeatedly called for diplomacy to settle multiple disputes over islands sprinkled across the South China Sea, China is unilaterally staking its claims by moving military gear to a growing number of them. It has been dredging the sea bottom to enlarge islets, and has built a 10,000-foot runway on one of them.
Its goal is clear: to lay claim to 90% of the South China Sea, a vital commercial waterway that carries $5 trillion in annual trade. Regional allies—including Brunei, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam—are nervously, and so far vainly—waiting for the U.S. to do something to thwart the Chinese advance.
China’s latest moves echo its pattern of asserting itself even as it appears to be currying favor with Washington. Five years ago, Beijing flew its top-secret J-20 stealth fighter while then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates was in Beijing. In 2013, the U.S. says a U.S. Navy cruiser almost collided with a Chinese warship that cut across its bow in the South China Sea while Vice President Joe Biden was in the Chinese capital. Last summer, a flotilla of five Chinese ships made an unprecedented trip into the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, while Obama was visiting the state.
Last week, the U.S. confirmed that China has deployed HQ-9 anti-aircraft missile batteries to Woody Island in the South China Sea as Obama was meeting with Southeast Asian leaders in Palm Springs, Calif. And on Tuesday, the Pentagon said the Chinese air force had dispatched J-11 and JH-7 warplanes to the same island, as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was in the middle of a visit to Washington.
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http://time.com/4236409/united-states-china-south-china-sea/