Saber rattling and China is testing the weak Obama. I guess Putin will have to help him out again.
-Geaux
China Re-Escalates, Deploys Warplanes To Air Defense Zone | Zero Hedge
The latter should not come as a surprise to China, and the reason why such double standards are allowed to exist in a US superpower legacy world is because neither Japan nor the US believe China would actually dare to re-escalate further. However, in a world in which the US is no longer an undisputed superpower (especially in the aftermath of the Syrian debacle in which Putin schooled the Obama administration) that is changing.
The first clear indication that China would not just sit there and do nothing, came overnight when China's first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, passed through the Taiwan Strait on Thursday morning on its way to a training mission in the South China Sea.
Naturally, the training mission is just the pretext. China's long-running if dormant feud with Taiwan, officially the Republic of China, is perhaps the best proxy of US interests in the region, where thanks to the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, the US sells arms and provides military training to the Taiwanese armed forces. China considers US involvement disruptive to the stability of the region, and made that quite clear in 2010 when Obama announced the decision to sell $6.4 billion in military hardware to the island leading to threats of economic sanctions from the mainland.
Which is why China crossing the Straits of Taiwan for the first time with its brand new aircraft carrier is nothing short of a message to Obama. From Xinhua:
It took about 10 hours for the carrier and its four escort ships to get through the strait separating the Chinese mainland and Taiwan.
The Liaoning entered the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday afternoon after it left its home port in Qingdao of east China's Shandong Province on Tuesday for the South China Sea on a scientific and training mission.
It was escorted by two missile destroyers, the Shenyang and Shijiazhuang, and two missile frigates, the Yantai and Weifang.
-Geaux
China Re-Escalates, Deploys Warplanes To Air Defense Zone | Zero Hedge
The latter should not come as a surprise to China, and the reason why such double standards are allowed to exist in a US superpower legacy world is because neither Japan nor the US believe China would actually dare to re-escalate further. However, in a world in which the US is no longer an undisputed superpower (especially in the aftermath of the Syrian debacle in which Putin schooled the Obama administration) that is changing.
The first clear indication that China would not just sit there and do nothing, came overnight when China's first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, passed through the Taiwan Strait on Thursday morning on its way to a training mission in the South China Sea.
Naturally, the training mission is just the pretext. China's long-running if dormant feud with Taiwan, officially the Republic of China, is perhaps the best proxy of US interests in the region, where thanks to the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, the US sells arms and provides military training to the Taiwanese armed forces. China considers US involvement disruptive to the stability of the region, and made that quite clear in 2010 when Obama announced the decision to sell $6.4 billion in military hardware to the island leading to threats of economic sanctions from the mainland.
Which is why China crossing the Straits of Taiwan for the first time with its brand new aircraft carrier is nothing short of a message to Obama. From Xinhua:
It took about 10 hours for the carrier and its four escort ships to get through the strait separating the Chinese mainland and Taiwan.
The Liaoning entered the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday afternoon after it left its home port in Qingdao of east China's Shandong Province on Tuesday for the South China Sea on a scientific and training mission.
It was escorted by two missile destroyers, the Shenyang and Shijiazhuang, and two missile frigates, the Yantai and Weifang.
