Chinese Aggressions

Clashes over South China Sea, Taiwan and trade have plunged Trump and Xi into the diplomatic deep freeze

By Simon Tisdall

China’s expanding efforts to impose its will on neighbours through diplomatic, commercial and military pressure – the so-called Xi doctrine – have drawn the sharpest riposte to date from the Trump administration, with Taiwan once again the main flashpoint in a sea of accelerating Sino-American rivalry.
Following recent verbal clashes over US freedom of navigation patrols in disputed South China Sea waters, officials in Washington say they plan to send a US aircraft carrier battlegroup into the Taiwan Strait separating the island from mainland China. 

The move was in response to China’s military “turning up the heat” on Taiwan, an official said.
Such a US deployment, if it goes ahead, would be seen as highly provocative by Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, who has vowed to reunify China with its “renegade province” in his lifetime. 

It would potentially bring the US navy into contact with Chinese surface and submarine forces and hundreds of People’s Liberation Army missile batteries lining the shores of the strait. 

Xi warned Taiwan’s pro-independence government in March that it would face the “punishment of history” if it pursued a separatist course.
Although the US does not recognise Taiwan as an independent country, it is, to all intents and purposes, its principal defender and guarantor against attack. 

Donald Trump outraged Beijing after he was elected by talking directly to Taiwan’s president by phone. 

Washington has sold Taiwan more than $15bn (£11.2bn) in arms since 2010, and Trump has increased bilateral contacts, including with the Pentagon.
Meanwhile, China has accelerated efforts to isolate Taiwan diplomatically, using its economic clout to pressure countries and international institutions into breaking off ties. 

It has curbed bilateral trade and cultural exchanges while increasing naval exercises and fighter-bomber sorties, including the deployment of its own aircraft carrier in the strait. 

That has led to warnings China could “do a Crimea” in Taiwan, aping Russia’s action in Ukraine.
The US response is being closely watched for signs of weakness by America’s other allies in the region, who are also feeling the squeeze. 

Australia’s government strongly protested this week at Chinese pressure on Qantas to list Taiwan as Chinese territory on its website. 

Australia is already involved in disputes with Beijing over covert meddling by China in its internal political affairs. 

Similar allegations of Chinese interference have surfaced in New Zealand.
Rodrigo Duterte, the volatile Philippines president, recently became so upset about Chinese encroachment on South China Sea islands claimed by Manila (which refers to the area as the West Philippines Sea) that he threatened to declare war. 

That led Vietnam, which has its own disputes with Beijing, to call for calm.
Dangerous US-China flashpoint issues appear to be multiplying fast. 

The two superpowers are locked in a worsening trade dispute. 

China took furious exception to American and Taiwanese comments about this week’s anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators. 

It flatly rejects criticism of its repression of similar sentiments in Hong Kong.
Now the US and China may also be heading for a collision over Trump’s attempts to cut a denuclearisation-for-normalisation deal with North Korea at a summit next week. 

China may greatly benefit from an end to sanctions. 

But if Pyongyang comes in from the cold, Beijing could catch a strategic chill.
Speaking in Singapore at the weekend, James Mattis, the US defence secretary, had a tough message for China, indicating how far relations have deteriorated since Trump visited Beijing last year. 

“We have seen those who wanted to dominate the region come and go, and we have been with you,” Mattis told America’s allies. China would ultimately pay a heavy price for bullying its neighbours.

Mattis accuses China of intimidation and coercion in South China Sea

Mattis takes hard line on China in Singapore speech

By Joshua Berlinger

Singapore -- US Defense Secretary James Mattis accused China of "intimidation and coercion" in the Indo-Pacific and declared that the United States does not plan to abandon its role in the region during a speech Saturday in Singapore.
"Make no mistake: America is in the Indo-Pacific to stay. This is our priority theater," Mattis said.
Mattis specifically called out Beijing's militarization of artificial islands in the South China Sea, home to some of the world's busiest sea lanes.
"We are aware China will face an array of challenges and opportunities in coming years, we are prepared to support China's choices if they promote long-term peace and prosperity for all in this dynamic region," Mattis said.
"Yet China's policy in the South China Sea stands in stark contrast to the openness our strategy promotes. It calls into question China's broader goals," he said.
Mattis and some of his counterparts from the Asia Pacific region are in Singapore for the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual gathering of security officials, contractors and academics in the Asian city-state.
The South China Sea has been a hot topic of discussion during the summit's opening, amid ongoing attempts by China to assert its dominance in the region.
China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Brunei all have competing claims to the territory. 

But while other countries have built military features and artificial islands, none come close to matching Beijing's in scale or ambition, which stretch hundreds of miles south and east from its most southerly province of Hainan.
In May, the Chinese military landed nuclear-capable bombers on its artificial islands for the first time.
Weeks earlier, US intelligence announced there was a high possibility Beijing had deployed anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles as part of ongoing military exercises.
"China's militarization of artificial features in the South China Sea includes the deployment of anti-ship missiles, surface-to-air missiles, electronic jammers and, more recently, the landing of bomber aircraft at woody island," said Mattis, confirming previous intelligence reports.
"Despite China's claims to the contrary, the placement of these weapon systems is tied directly to military use for the purposes of intimidation and coercion," he said.
On Sunday, two US Navy warships sailed close to a handful of disputed islands claimed by China in the Paracel island chain, east of Vietnam, in a move that drew the ire of Beijing.
"I think it goes to a fundamental disconnect between the way the international tribunals have looked at these waters -- these waters look to us as free and open waters," said Mattis, addressing last week's freedom of navigation operation directly.
"We do not do freedom of navigation for America alone, we do freedom of navigation for all nations... we do not see it as a militarization by going through what has traditionally been international water space. We see it as affirmation of the rules-based international order."
Though Mattis appeared to draw a firm line between the actions of the US and China, he insisted the US is not asking other countries in the region to choose sides.
"China should and does have a voice in shaping the international system, and all of China's neighbors have a voice in shaping China's role," said Mattis, adding that he would travel to Beijing soon "at China's invitation."
China claims its actions in the South China Sea are entirely peaceful and meant to protect its citizens and trading interests.

Korean summit
Mattis only briefly mentioned the status of the Korean Peninsula in his formal remarks, which come just hours after Donald Trump announced that he will hold a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore on June 12, just days after Mattis departs.
The Defense Secretary stuck to fairly common talking points from Washington: highlighting the importance of US alliances and the ultimate goal of complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Much of the speech was focused on longer-term challenges in the region known as the Indo-Pacific, a phrase used throughout India and Southeast Asia and recently embraced by the Trump administration.
He also mentioned the importance of upholding US alliances and partnerships in the region, specifically highlighting Australia, New Zealand and India. 

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave the keynote opening speech this year, also emphasizing the importance of a free and open Indo-Pacific.
Mattis also touched upon the status of Taiwan, an issue bound to ruffle feathers in Beijing. 

China views the island as a renegade province and seeks its eventual reunification with the mainland.
Beijing has been accused of ramping up the pressure on Taipei in recent weeks, with Taiwan accusing using its diplomatic and economic weight to isolate the island from the international community. 

It has also punished business for recognizing Taiwan as independent country.
"We oppose all unilateral efforts to alter the status quo and will continue to insist any resolution of differences accord with the will of the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait," he said.
Mattis delivered the keynote address at the event last year.

US rebrands Pacific command amid tensions with China

By Ryan Browne

The US announced Wednesday that it would rebrand the command responsible for overseeing US military operations in Asia, a move that comes amid heightened tensions with China over the militarization of the South China Sea.
US Pacific Command will now be called US Indo-Pacific Command, Secretary of Defense James Mattis said while speaking at a change of command ceremony in Hawaii, where the command's headquarters is located.
"In recognition of the increasing connectivity of the Indian and Pacific Oceans today we rename the US Pacific Command to US Indo-Pacific Command," Mattis said.
"It is our primary combatant command, it's standing watch and intimately engaged with over half of the earth's surface and its diverse populations, from Hollywood, to Bollywood, from polar bears to penguins," Mattis said of the command.
Adm. Harry Harris, who oversaw US military operations in the region until Wednesday, has been tapped by President Donald Trump to serve as the US ambassador to South Korea. 

Adm. Phillip Davidson will now lead the Indo-Pacific Command, which oversees some 375,000 US military and civilian personnel.
US officials say the name change is meant to better reflect the command's areas of responsibility, which includes 36 nations as well as both the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
The US has increased cooperation with India in a range of areas, including defense cooperation, and both Washington and New Delhi have voiced concerns about what they see as an increased assertiveness by China's military.
The rebranding comes in the wake of a series of actions by both the Chinese and US militaries that have raised tensions in the South China Sea. 

The US and the majority of the international community reject Beijing's claims of ownership of the area.
In recent months US officials have said that the Chinese military has deployed anti-ship missiles, surface-to-air missile systems, and electronic jammers to contested features in the Spratly Islands region of the South China Sea.
China also recently landed a nuclear-capable H-6K bomber aircraft on Woody Island for the first time.
Those actions led the US to disinvite China from participating in the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) Exercise, which the US Navy calls "the world's largest international maritime exercise," and involves some 26 nations including India and countries like Vietnam and the Philippines which actively contest China's claims to the South China Sea.
"China's continued militarization of disputed features in the South China Sea only serve to raise tensions and destabilize the region. As an initial response to China's continued militarization of the South China Sea we have disinvited the PLA Navy from the 2018 Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) Exercise," Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Chris Logan told CNN last week.
"We have called on China to remove the military systems immediately and to reverse course on the militarization of disputed South China Sea features," he added.
The US Navy also sailed two warships Sunday past a handful of disputed islands in the South China Sea, including Woody Island where the Chinese bomber landed, a move that drew the immediate ire of Beijing.
Two US defense officials told CNN that the guided-missile destroyer USS Higgins and the cruiser USS Antietam sailed within 12 miles of four of the Paracel Islands in what the US Navy calls a "freedom of navigation operation," which are meant to enforce the right of free passage in international waters.
Two US officials said that during the freedom of navigation exercise a Chinese naval vessel shadowed the US warships, coming close enough to the US ships that the encounter was considered unprofessional but safe.
"It's international waters, and a lot of nations want to see freedom of navigation," Mattis told reporters Tuesday while en route to the change of command ceremony.

Chinese Peril

Mattis to make call for Asean unity against China at meeting of defence ministers

The Straits Times

US Defence Secretary James Mattis will meet his counterparts from Japan and South Korea on Oct 23 to discuss North Korea. He is due to visit Thailand and South Korea as well on his eight-day tour.

CLARK FREEPORT, PHILIPPINES - US Defence Secretary James Mattis is expected to make a call for South-east Asian unity against China during a meeting of defence ministers in the Philippines on Monday (Oct 23), the Associated Press reported.
The Asean bloc has been divided as the US and China vie for influence in the region, with the tensions magnified by a dispute over China's island-building activities in the South China Sea.
US influence has taken a hit from President Donald Trump's decision to cancel the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact championed by his predecessor, Mr Barack Obama, appearing to give Mr Obama's "pivot to Asia" short shrift.
"(Asean gives) voice to those who want relations between states to be based on respect, and not on predatory economics or on the size of militaries," General Mattis told reporters ahead of his meetings in the Philippines, though he did not mention China by name. 

"The United States remains unambiguously committed to supporting Asean."
The US sees a united Asean as a bulwark against China, which pursues individual bilateral relations with members at the expense of the bloc. 

It also wants Asean to squeeze North Korea amid a crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.
Gen Mattis' comments echoed US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's call for a India as a populous, democratic counterweight to China, inviting it to take a leading security role in the Indo-Pacific region. 

The US has made India a major defence partner, offering it top-flight weapons systems. 

Gen Mattis will meet Indian Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman during his trip to the country this week.
On Monday, Gen Mattis was to hold an informal meeting with Asean members, who have been divided on taking a strong joint position over the South China Sea, making no mention of a 2016 ruling in The Hague that found no legal basis for China's expansive territorial claims.
Cambodia and Laos have taken sides with China in the dispute, while US allies Thailand, Vietnam and recently the Philippines have opposed Beijing. 

But under Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines relationship with China has warmed even as US ties soured.
Gen Mattis will meet his counterparts from Japan and South Korea on Monday to discuss North Korea. 

He is due to visit Thailand and South Korea as well on his eight-day tour.

Sina Delenda Est

Mattis Says China’s Militarization of Man-Made Islands Unacceptable
By William Ide
U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis speaks at the 16th IISS Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, June 3, 2017.

SINGAPORE — U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis applauded China’s efforts to work with the international community on North Korea at an annual security forum in Singapore Saturday. 

But when it came to the South China Sea, he called China’s ongoing militarization of man-made islands there and its disregard for international order, unacceptable.
“We cannot accept Chinese actions that impinge on the interests of the international community, undermining the rules-based order that has benefited all countries here today (at the forum), including, and especially China,” Mattis said, in a speech to delegates and the media at the Shangri-La Dialogue.
He said that while competition between the world’s two largest economies was bound to occur, conflict is not inevitable.
“Artificial island construction and indisputable militarization of facilities on features in international waters undermines regional stability,” he said, noting that China’s military buildup of the man-made beachheads differed from what other countries had done.
Beijing’s approach is different not only in terms of the nature of weaponization on the artificial islands, Mattis said, but for “China’s disregard for international law, it’s contempt for other nation’s interests and its efforts to dismiss nonadversarial resolution of issues.”
People sit in front of the TV screen showing a news program reporting about North Korea's missile firing, at Seoul Train Station in Seoul, South Korea, May 29, 2017.
North Korea a priority
Since coming to office, Donald Trump has made North Korea a top priority, and in his speech, Mattis echoed concerns the administration has about the clear and present danger the North poses to the region and beyond.
“Coupled with reckless proclamations, the current North Korean program signals a clear intent to acquire nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, including those of intercontinental range, that pose direct and immediate threats to our regional allies, our partners, and all the world,” he said.
His tough remarks dispelled speculation that the administration was keeping quiet about the South China Sea in exchange for China’s cooperation in dealing with Pyongyang. 

Mattis said the interests of the United States allies would not be used as bargaining chips.
Ambassadors to the United Nations raise hands in a Security Council resolution vote to sanction North Korea at U.N. headquarters in New York, June 2, 2017.

New sanctions, new diplomacy
Without elaborating, the defense secretary said countries are working on new, enhanced sanctions and diplomatic efforts to put more pressure on North Korea. 

In addition to words and support, however, he said action was needed as well — from all parties.
“The Trump administration is encouraged by China’s renewed commitment to work with the international community toward denuclearization,” he said. 

“Ultimately we believe that China will come to recognize North Korea as a strategic liability and not an asset. A liability inciting increased disharmony and causing peace-loving populations in the region to increase defense spending.”
While relations between Pyongyang and Beijing have grown increasingly frayed in recent years under the administration of Kim Jong-Un, China is still North Korea’s biggest ally and supporter. Analysts argue that Beijing does not want the issue to be resolved because of the possibility that it could lead to a unified Korea and put the United States right on its northeastern doorstep.

Sina Delenda Est

The Senkaku Islands have become the site of renewed Chinese aggression

By Emma Graham-Harrison in Ishigaki

Part of the disputed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.

The Chinese flotilla arrived at the start of August, more than 300 fishing boats escorted by 15 vast coastguard ships, some of them armed. 

They circled the Senkaku Islands for a week, drifting into and out of Japanese territorial waters as Tokyo’s own coastguard played cat and mouse with the intruders.
Then they were gone, but the message they left behind was clear. 

China had upped the stakes again in a simmering territorial dispute that has made the southern tip of Japan’s island archipelago one of the most dangerous places in the region.

Japan accuses China of threatening Pacific peace

Ishigaki Island does not look like a frontline. 

Japan’s own tropical idyll, it is a sleepy place of pineapple fields and mango orchards, where thousands of tourists potter along white sand beaches and scuba dive in crystal clear seas. 

Yet this tiny dot on the edge of the Pacific is the closest Japanese town to the uninhabited Senkaku Islands, once inhospitable home to a tuna processing factory, now abandoned but key to lucrative fishing grounds, oil and gas fields and a strategic shipping route.
Under other circumstances the rocky outcrops – their name means sharp pavilions – would have only a unique species of mole as their sole claim for international attention. 

But their location, and competing claims of ownership from China and Japan have made them a potential flashpoint for war and focus of extreme anxiety from Tokyo to Washington.
Beijing’s maritime ambitions have been thrown into sharp focus by its extraordinary creation of a chain of islands from previously open seas over the past few years. 

It has shored up ambitious claims to swaths of ocean far from the Chinese coastline with the frantic construction of artificial islands that has seen runways, radar and guns appear on what were submerged coral reefs just five years ago.

Ishigaki Island in Okinawa.

Its strategic plans for the East China Sea have drawn less attention, perhaps because developments have not been so dramatic. 

But the prospect of tensions escalating into hostilities is real.

It faces in Japan a more powerful rival than any farther south, and one that has the US as a protector, bound by treaty to come to Tokyo’s aid if its territory is attacked. 

Relations between the uneasy neighbours are so strained that they have not even got a hotline set up for military communication in a crisis, despite years of talks aimed at establishing one.
The issue is so pressing that when new US defence secretary James Mattis visited Tokyo last week, confirming America’s commitment to defend the islands was top of the foreign minister’s agenda.
“Secretary Mattis made clear that the Senkaku Islands are in the territories under the administration of Japan,” Fumio Kishida said after the meeting. 

Few tourists visiting Ishigaki notice the trouble that is brewing in paradise, but those who live on the island have seen a slow escalation in tensions transform their town and lives, particularly those of the fishermen chased away from the Senkakus by Chinese boats.
“What is frightening for us is that when we go there, the Chinese government ships aggressively approach us, they are much larger than our fishing boats and we are afraid of collisions,” said Manabu Namisato, 53, who has been fishing for three decades.
Four years ago a Chinese coastguard ship around 150 times the size of his 10-tonne tuna fishing vessel nearly rammed him on the high seas. 

“I don’t know if they are coming towards us intentionally or not,” he said, but the memory still unnerves him. 

“If that boat had hit me I wouldn’t be here today.”
The fishermen have been warned for their own safety to stay away, but don’t need to be told. 

“It’s not that we don’t want to go there, it’s that we can’t go there. We have agreed to talk to you, because we are afraid the situation may get worse.”
The fleet that arrived last August was exceptionally large, but comes after years of regular incursions – and the government fears another influx this summer.
From Ishigaki to Tokyo, Japanese fear that the aggressive coastguards and the fleets they shepherd to the Senkakus are part of a plan from Beijing to bolster China’s claim to the islands by establishing de facto control of the area’s fishing ground.

A shopping arcade in Ishigaki. 

“There is possibility the Chinese government will use this fact that our fishing boats are not going there,” admitted an official from the ministry of foreign affairs, adding that the argument would have little standing under international law.
Still, rising numbers of Chinese boats flooding into the area each year have put Japan in a difficult position. 

It does not want to look weak but fears using military force would give China a long-awaited excuse for further confrontation.
“If we send ships in the Chinese government will use this to further escalate the situation and we don’t want that,” the official added.
Both sides claim history is on their side, although Japan is the only country ever known to have citizens living on the islands – for two decades last century. 

China’s claim is also slightly undermined by its timing, with the first objection to Japanese ownership claims lodged only after publication of a UN report locating deposits of oil and gas nearby.
There has already been a sharp rise in tensions since 2012 when Japan nationalised the islands. 

The move warded off a planned sale to Tokyo’s then mayor, a hardline nationalist apparently hoping to develop the islands, which would certainly have inflamed sentiments in China.
But Beijing saw, or chose to see, aggression where Tokyo felt it was defending an uneasy status quo. Soon violent protests broke out around China, with Japanese cars, shops and factories vandalised, several firms shutting down production and tour trips abruptly cancelled.
At sea, everything changed. 

Chinese coastguard ships now regularly sail towards the islands, often escorting fleets of fishing boats. 

And where once the Chinese boats would stray into Japanese waters perhaps once every couple of years, there has been such a regular pattern of two or three monthly violations in recent years that it is hard not to see a schedule.
Japan says China now has a fleet that includes repurposed naval ships, the largest coastguard patrol in the world, and arms on many vessels. 

In response Japan has expanded its own coastguard, taking the Ishigaki fleet alone to 16 boats stationed at a newly extended pier.
There are daily patrols to the Senkakus, a trip of five or six hours each way, with teams on standby to show up in greater force. 

“Right now our current policy is to exceed the Chinese vessels around Senkaku, so if they are showing up with three or four, we want more, if they show up with six or seven we want more,” said Hiraki Odagi, spokesman for the Japanese coastguard.
The boats have cannons, and some of the sailors bear arms, but their missions are shrouded in military secrecy. 

“I’m only at liberty to say we had more than the number of Chinese vessels,” Odagi said.
China’s air force is also testing Japan’s defences, with Japanese fighter jets now scrambled twice a day on average to warn incoming aircraft away from the air space over the islands. 

There were 22 scrambles in 2008, but 644 last year.
Some in Ishigaki, alarmed by China’s encroachment on the islands, feel Japan should have done more to assert its control over the islands decades ago, when China had less money, less military power and less international clout.
“I now think that the Japanese government should have done something,” said Yoshitaka Nakayama, mayor of Ishigaki, who is calling on the government to push ahead with plans to deploy a unit of the Japanese military, formally known as the self-defence force, to the island. 

“Meanwhile China has become a superpower… and if we continue to put this issue on the shelf and not do anything then China will become even more powerful.”
Even a small harbour, or pier, on the main Senkaku island where fishermen could take shelter in bad weather might persuade more to risk a trip to the area, while reinforcing Japanese claims, he says. But years of pleas have fallen on deaf official ears, and Nakayama fears Tokyo’s caution could pave the way for disaster.
“The situation I am worried about is this – a Chinese ship or fishing boat would come to the island, and fishermen land on the island. Then Japanese police and coastguard officials would go on the island to remove them. Then the Chinese will give a reason to deploy warships to the island, saying ‘we need to protect our citizens’.”
The dispute goes to the heart of concerns about China’s growing ambition, as it looks to project power across a region once dominated by America. 

And while its expansion in the South China Sea has caused alarm around the world, Japanese officials point out that East China Sea, where the Senkakus lie, is even closer to China’s shoreline and on the path out to the Pacific.
In Ishigaki many believe a stronger position is the only way to ward off disaster, with a bullishness that carries a disturbing echo of China’s own uncompromising stance.
“I think the Japanese government has prioritised the relationship with China, including economic ties,” said Yoshiyuki Toita, secretary general of the Yaeyama Defence Association which brings together more than 100 people on Ishigaki and its surrounding islands to campaign and study.
“If we just worry about temporary economic loss and give in, China may create a military facility in this area, so there will be more national security loss than economic loss. Japanese people should understand that and we should raise awareness about issues of territorial claims.”

Chinese aggressions

1 DMZ (demilitarised zone between North and South Korea): Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions keep tensions high in a heavily militarised peninsula
2 Kuril islands held by Russia, claimed by Japan as part of its ‘northern territories’: The Kuril Islands were seized by Soviet forces during the second world war. Failure to resolve the resulting territorial dispute has soured relations between Moscow and Tokyo.
3 Sea of Japan (between North Korea and Japan): Pyongyang fired a series of ballistic missiles into the sea off its coast last summer, after the US and South Korea agreed to deploy a new anti-missile system. The area has seen a history of disputes between Jaopan, Russia and South Korea.
4 Taiwan Strait (between Taiwan and China): China was angered by a controversial Trump phone call, warning Washington its right to the island was ‘non-negotiable’.
5 Senkaku islands (East China Sea): It may prove a global flashpoint as armed Chinese coastguard vessels invade.
6 Paracel islands (South China Sea): Woody Island is the largest of the Paracels, which have been under China’s control since 1974. Beijing has installed missile launchers while the US wants to enforce freedom of navigation.
7 Scarborough shoal (South China Sea): There has been a five-year dispute between the Philippines and China over ownership of the territory near Luzon island.
8 Spratly Islands (South China Sea): China has built a runway with capacity for military planes and is using dredgers to build artificial islands. Vietnam disputes China’s ambitions. 

Trump Should Sanction China for Destabilizing South Korea

As Secretary of Defense James Mattis tours Asia to pledge support to our allies, the best form of reassurance would be action against China’s provocative moves in the region.
By GORDON G. CHANG

Secretary of Defense James Mattis is now ending his “Mission Reassurance,” the first foreign trip by a Trump administration official. 

He spent two days in Seoul and is finishing up in Tokyo.
The SecDef has been issuing strong words confirming America’s commitment to defend South Korea and Japan. 

That’s important. 

Now, however, it’s time for President Donald Trump to back up the reassurances with stiff economic sanctions on China for destabilizing North Asia.
Mattis’s staff, sounding pitch-perfect, characterized his inaugural foreign tour as a “listening trip.”
Yet the former Marine Corps four-star general was also there to speak. 

“I want there to be no misunderstanding during the transition in Washington that we stand firmly, 100 percent shoulder-to-shoulder with you and the Japanese people,” he said on Friday to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
“We stand with our peace-loving Republic of Korea ally to maintain stability on the peninsula and in the region,” Mattis said earlier in the day in Seoul. 

“America’s commitments to defending our allies and to upholding our extended deterrence guarantees remain ironclad: Any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming.”
What is neither effective nor overwhelming is America’s response to provocative Chinese actions directed against Seoul. 

For more than a year, Beijing has been trying to prevent South Korea from basing on its soil the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, designed to shoot down incoming missiles. 

From a location in the South, THAAD, as the Lockheed Martin-built system is called, can protect South Korea, Japan, Guam, and the United States. 

Beijing objects to deployment as it is worried that THAAD’s powerful radars can peer over the border into China and hit its missiles as well as North Korea’s.
Beijing has pulled out the stops in its campaign against Seoul, threatening to cut diplomatic relations and issuing media tirades. 

Moreover, it has used the Chinese economy as a club. 

It has, for instance, barred South Korea’s K-pop groups from performing in China, ended charter flights to the South, limited Chinese tourists going there, and banned the import of South Korean cosmetics.
And Beijing has gone after Lotte Group. 

The South Korean chaebol, the country’s fifth largest, is thinking of swapping land, a golf course, with the country’s Ministry of Defense so that the government can get a suitable parcel for the first THAAD battery.
There is talk of a boycott of Lotte Chinese outlets and “continuous sanctions.” 

Last November, the Chinese government also ordered an audit of an affiliate of Lotte and a fire-safety inspection of a Lotte store.
So far, the pressure on the conglomerate is working. 

On Friday, the board of directors of Lotte International, the group unit that owns the land in question, again deferred a decision to approve the deal. 

Perhaps significantly, the company did not announce a future board meeting.
In response, Seoul has stopped approving visas for Beijing’s Confucius Institutes in South Korea. That’s a brave step, but the South does not have the heft to significantly affect Beijing’s calculus on the matter.
The United States, however, does. 

The American market is critical to China, and closing it—or threatening to do so—would make Beijing rethink its intimidation of Seoul.
China is itself vulnerable to U.S. pressure. 

In 2015, China ran a trade surplus in goods and services of $336.2 billion. 

The surplus looks like it was slightly smaller last year, but it was nonetheless substantial. 

China could not sustain a sudden cut off of trade with the U.S.
Of course, America would be hurt as well, but the damage would be far smaller. 

The U.S. is not dependent on trade with China and its economy is far larger than China’s, thereby better able to withstand shocks. 

Last year, China’s gross domestic product, as reported by the official National Bureau of Statistics, was $10.83 trillion. 

America’s, according to the first estimate of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, was $18.86 trillion. 

In reality, the disparity is almost certainly larger due to Beijing’s overreporting.
Trump, while campaigning for the presidency, talked about a 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods to counteract the effect of Beijing’s increasingly predatory trade practices. 

Many objected to the cost of such a levy, but no cost is too high to get the earliest warning of a North Korean—or, for that matter, Chinese—launch of a nuclear weapon.
It’s outrageous that China has armed North Korea’s Kim regime and is now threatening “a small country”—Beijing’s demeaning term for South Korea—for trying to protect itself, but it’s understandable why it’s trying to get away with that. 

It is not explicable, however, why Washington allows the Chinese to get away with such intimidation.
It’s good for Mattis to issue reassurances to jittery American allies, but it would be even better for his boss to show real American commitment by imposing costs on China.
The best form of reassurance, after all, is action. 

Sina Delenda Est: Standing Up to China Is Smart Foreign Policy

China's fifth column is making the argument to do nothing to antagonize China, even if it means forfeiting American interests and ideals. That would be a historic mistake.
By James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara

The Japan Times must be having a hard time finding copy to fill its op-ed pages. 

Exhibit A: a screed from an “adjunct senior scholar” at the Chinese Communist Party–affiliated National Institute for South China Sea Studies in Haikou, China, concerning U.S. strategy toward China in the age of Trump. 

In "Mark Valencia"’s telling, Donald Trump’s ascent to the presidency has liberated “U.S. China-bashers” to have a “field day” at China’s expense. 

“Extremism” rules the day in Washington and academic precincts.
Zounds!
Wicked times are afoot, you’d think. 

But bear in mind that a lot of things look like extremism to someone who’s fronting for an extremist regime. 

To build his case "Valencia" refers obliquely to “two academics from the Naval War College.” 

The nameless academics, he says, suggest that “America should revive its past ‘daring-do’ [we think you mean derring-do, "Mark"] and ‘recognize that close quarters encounters, cat and mouse games between submarines and opposing fleets, and even deliberate collisions’ could become routine elements of the U.S.-China rivalry.”
We confess to being the scurrilous duo. 

The passages "Valencia" quotes come from an article we wrote for Orbis, a journal published by the University of Pennsylvania’s Foreign Policy Research Institute. (Look for the article here since "he" doesn’t bother furnishing a link.)
We compiled the article long before the election, and aimed it at whichever candidate might prevail. Our bottom line: China is already competing with America in the China seas and Western Pacific. Close-quarters encounters between Chinese and American ships and planes are already routine elements of the U.S.-China rivalry—just as they were between Soviet and American ships and planes during the Cold War. 

And Chinese seamen and airmen initiate these encounters.
Washington can either wrest the initiative away from Beijing, or it can remain passive and continue losing ground in the strategic competition. 

Better to seize the initiative. 

To do so the new U.S. administration must relearn the art of deterrence, and to deter Chinese aggression the administration must accept that hazards come with the territory. 

That’s Strategy 101—basic stuff for anyone fluent in statecraft.
"Valencia" is a lumper. 

He lumps our analysis with other commentators’ views, many quite different from our own, before attempting the equivalent of an op-ed drive-by shooting. 

All of our views are equivalent for him; all are expressions of “extremism.” 

The others—Gordon Chang and James Kraska, to name two—can doubtless speak up for themselves should they choose. 

We’ll stick to speaking up for ourselves.
And anyone who takes the trouble to read our item—download early, download often—will realize "Valencia" excerpts a couple of quotations out of context and retrofits them to a predetermined storyline. 

First write conclusion, then fit facts to it!
Let’s go through this point by point. 

First, Valencia implies that Trump’s victory initiated our analysis. 

“This deluge,” he opines, “was stimulated by statements by Trump and his nominees for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson and secretary of defense, James Mattis.” 

He goes on to assert that such “statements by incoming government leaders and influence peddlers provided an opportunity for America’s China hawks to promote their views.”
Wrong.
"Valencia" has it precisely backward. 

And a simple internet search would have revealed the blunder before he committed it. 

Explains Orbis editor-in-chief Mackubin Owens helpfully: “This special issue of Orbis features articles by FPRI associates offering ‘advice to the next president.’ 

Written before the election [our italics], these essays offer recommendations for national security affairs in general, as well as for regional issues.”
And so it was. 

We drafted the article in August—months ahead of the election, and when Hillary Clinton remained the odds-on favorite to win the White House. 

We assumed a Clinton administration would be the primary audience, but wrote it to advise whoever might prevail in November. 

In short, this was a nonpartisan venture, compiled in the spirit of our running counsel to the Obama administration.
And it should have bipartisan appeal.

As secretary of state, it’s worth recalling, Clinton was also the architect of America’s “pivot,” a.k.a. “rebalance,” to Asia—an undertaking aimed at counterbalancing China. 

Considering China’s record of bellicosity in maritime Asia, and considering Clinton’s diplomatic past, we had good reason to believe that she and her lieutenants would prove as receptive to our message as Trump.
More so, maybe. 

In any event: it’s misleading and false for "Valencia" to accuse us of devising “U.S. tactics in the Trump era.” 

We are devising strategy to deter a domineering China—no matter who occupies the Oval Office. 

That our article appeared after Trump prevailed represents mere happenstance.
Second, "Valencia" insinuates that we hold extremist views. 

Well, we guess so... insofar as anyone who wants to deter an aggressor from further aggression entertains extremist views. 

Deterrence involves putting an antagonist on notice that it will suffer unacceptable consequences should it take some action we wish to proscribe. 

It involves fielding military power sufficient to make good on the threat, whether the requisite capabilities be nuclear or conventional. 

And it involves convincing the antagonist we’re resolute about making good on our threats.
We’re glad to keep company with such hardnosed practitioners of deterrence as Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and John Kennedy—extremists all, no doubt. 

Statesmen of yore made Moscow a believer in American power and resolve—and largely held the line against communism.
Except in that trivial sense, though, there’s nothing extreme about our argument. 

We maintain that China and the United States are pursuing irreconcilable goals in maritime Asia. 

The United States wants to preserve freedom of the sea, China wants anything but. 

Both contenders prize their goals, and both are presumably prepared to mount open-ended efforts of significant proportions to obtain those goals. 

If Beijing and Washington want nonnegotiable things a lot, then the Trump administration must gird itself for a long standoff.
Simple as that.
We also point out that China embarked on a massive buildup of maritime power over a decade ago. Excluding the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet, Beijing already boasts the largest naval and coast-guard fleets in Asia, not to mention a seagoing militia to augment its navy and coast guard. 

And these forces continue growing. 

China’s navy may number over 500 vessels by 2030. 

By contrast, the U.S. Navy espouses an eventual fleet of 355 vessels, up from 274 today. 

President Trump is on record favoring a 350-ship force. 

Defense budgets may—or may not—support a U.S. Navy that large.
These are objective facts about which the Chinese media regularly brag. 

Based on these material trends, we postulate that maritime Asia is becoming increasingly competitive, that China is a formidable competitor, and that the trendlines are running in its favor. How’s that for extreme?
We thus urge U.S. policymakers to acknowledge that the forward U.S. presence in Asia will come under mounting danger in the coming years. 

Washington may have to gamble from time to time to shore it up. 

It may have to hold things that Beijing treasures—things like the Chinese navy’s surface fleet—at risk. 

We encourage decision-makers to embrace risk as an implement of statecraft rather than shy away from it. 

Manipulating and imposing risk is a universal strategy that practitioners in Beijing routinely employ. Washington should reply in kind.
And as "Valencia" well knows—or should know—risk-taking constitutes part of the art of strategy. 

The approach we recommend is well-grounded in theory, as articulated by the late Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling and many others.
There is nothing novel about risk, then. U.S. leaders must rediscover this elemental fact. 

For too long Washington recoiled from taking risk, treating it as a liability while conflating it with recklessness. 

But a risk-averse nation has a hard time deterring: who believes a diffident statesman’s deterrent threats? 

We simply implore civilian and military leaders to realign their attitude toward risk to match the changing strategic landscape in Asia. 

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Our argument, then, is a far cry from the extremism "Valencia" deplores in his hit piece. 

A casual reader of his commentary can be pardoned for concluding that we advocate reckless action on the U.S. Navy’s part. 

But it’s "Valencia" who failed his audience.
Third, "Valencia" claims that because of recent statements from U.S. policy-makers—and by implication because of our writing, which he falsely depicts as a product of those statements—“the damage to the U.S.-China relationship and the stability of the region has already been done.” 

But what damage is he referring to? 

As of this writing, the Trump administration has been in office less than a week. 

The White House has issued no official policy touching the South China Sea. 

As far as we know, our fleets in the Western Pacific have done nothing unusual.
"Valencia", it appears, is objecting to a few China-related tweets from Trump following the November elections. 

"Valencia" is indulging in hype.
China, by contrast, has inflicted colossal damage on regional concord. 

Beijing has repeatedly intimidated the Philippines, Vietnam, and Japan in offshore areas. 

It has built islands occupying thousands of acres of land in the heart of the South China Sea. 

It has fortified these manufactured islets, breaking Xi Jinping’s pledge not to militarize them. 

It has rattled its saber through successive military drills, and issued stark warnings about war through various media mouthpieces.
And lastly, "Valencia" suggests that the United States should relinquish vital interests—including those of its Asian allies—to mollify Chinese sensibilities. 

He cites, for example, a Chinese scholar voicing concern that “The theme of clash of civilizations [is] becoming increasingly popular in Chinese circles.” 

"Valencia" also frets about “a possible Thucydian trap [we think you mean Thucydides trap, "Mark"],” a “supposedly ‘inevitable’ conflict between a status-quo power and a rising power.”
His implication, presumably, is that Washington, the guardian of the status quo, should acquiesce in Beijing’s bullying to escape the Thucydides trap. 

That would square with China’s party line. 

And indeed, aggressors do love to win peacefully.
"Valencia" further objects that the timing of a U.S. policy turnabout is inconvenient for the Chinese. 

He observes that the 19th Party Congress will convene this fall to determine China’s leadership transition. 

Xi Jinping might take a hard line in advance of the congress to placate nationalist audiences. 

A U.S. policy shift might box him in.
That may be true, but Chinese Communist Party politics cannot form the basis of U.S. foreign policy. 

Nor, it bears mentioning, do the Chinese consult or respect American political timelines as they pursue foreign-policy aims. 

Just the opposite: they regard the last months of a departing administration and early months of an incoming administration as opportune times to make mischief.
"Valencia"’s message to America is plain: do nothing to antagonize China, even if it means forfeiting American interests and ideals. 

He falls squarely into the don’t provoke China school we take to task at Orbis. 

It is precisely this camp’s thinking that begat paralysis in U.S. maritime strategy in Asia. 

Inaction is no longer tolerable as the strategic circumstances change around us.
As for the Japan Times and its readership: Japanese leaders and rank-and-file citizens should pray the Trump administration rejects "Mark Valencia"’s words. 

If the administration heeded them, it would loosen or abandon the alliance that underwrites Japan’s security and prosperity. 

That would constitute Beijing’s price for U.S.-China amity. 

And if America paid that price, surrendering the Senkaku Islands to China would represent the least of Japan’s worries. 

Dark days would lie ahead.
Let’s make China worry instead.

The Just War

Can Xi Jinping Survive a Nuclear Strike?

By Anthony Capaccio

U.S. intelligence agencies and the Pentagon’s Strategic Command are working on a new evaluation of whether the Russian and Chinese leadership could survive a nuclear strike and keep operating.
The new study, ordered by Congress before Trump took office, drew bipartisan support from members who harbor deep concern about China’s increasing military boldness and distrust of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions.
While Trump has pledged to “greatly strengthen and expand” U.S. nuclear capabilities, he also has predicted he can make deals with Putin that may include reducing U.S. sanctions in return for future cuts in nuclear arsenals. 

The two leaders talked by phone for about an hour on Saturday.
Under the little-noticed provision in this year’s defense authorization measure, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the U.S. Strategic Command -- which plans and would execute nuclear strikes -- will evaluate the post-attack capabilities of the two nuclear powers. 

The law mandates a report on Russian and Chinese “leadership survivability, command and control and continuity of government programs.”
The review is to include “the location and description of above and underground facilities important to the political and military” leadership and which facilities various senior leaders “are expected to operate out of during crisis and wartime.”

U.S.’s Own Plans
The Strategic Command is also directed to “provide a detailed description” for “how leadership survivability” and “command and control” in Russia and China are factored into the U.S.’s own nuclear war planning. 

The directive was championed by Republican Representative Michael Turner of Ohio, a member of the House Armed Service Committee’s Strategic Forces panel.
“Our experts are drafting an appropriate response,” Navy Captain Brook DeWalt, a spokesman for the Strategic Command, said in an e-mail. 

While “it’s premature to pass along any details at this point, we can update you further at a later date.”
Trump has signaled support for upgrading the U.S. nuclear arsenal. 

In a memorandum on Friday, he ordered Defense Secretary James Mattis to “initiate a new Nuclear Posture Review to ensure that the United States nuclear deterrent is modern, robust, flexible, resilient, ready, and appropriately tailored to deter 21st-century threats and reassure our allies.”
The government already was planning what arms control advocates say may be a trillion-dollar modernization of the air-sea-land triad over 30 years starring in the mid-2020s when operations and support are included. 

Those plans were approved under Barack Obama.
“The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes,” Trump wrote in a Dec. 22 Twitter posting. 

Also in December, Mika Brzezinski, co-host of MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ show, said Trump told her in a phone call: “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”
In addition, Trump and his national security team have vowed to confront China on issues from trade to its territorial claims in the South China Sea.

‘Doomsday Clock’
Last week, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists cited “nuclear volatility” along with climate change as reasons it has moved up its symbolic “Doomsday Clock” by 30 seconds to two and a half minutes to midnight, the closest to a potential global disaster since 1953.
Representative Turner said in an e-mail that the U.S. “must understand how China and Russia intend to fight a war and how their leadership will command and control a potential conflict. This knowledge is pivotal to our ability to deter the threat.”
Russia and China “have invested considerable effort and resources into understanding how we fight, including how to interfere with our leadership’s communication capabilities,” he said. 

“We must not ignore gaps in our understanding of key adversary capabilities.”
Targeting “leadership and relocation locations is part of long-standing U.S. strategy to make clear that potential enemy leaders understand they cannot win a nuclear war,” Franklin Miller, a former senior Pentagon official who served under seven defense secretaries and as the National Security Council’s senior director for defense policy and arms control, said in an interview.

Command Bunkers
Because such issues have been part of U.S. nuclear planning for decades, Turner is probably raising more specific issues he can’t talk about publicly, Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, said in an e-mail.
Nuclear leaders in Russia and China “plan to direct nuclear forces from inside command bunkers buried deeply beneath the earth or deeply inside mountains,” said Bruce Blair, a Princeton University research scholar on nuclear security policy and co-founder of Global Zero, a group devoted to eliminating nuclear weapons.
Turner’s statement implies that “deterring them requires U.S. strategic cruise missiles that can maneuver around the mountains to strike the bunkers from any angle,” Blair said.

The Empire Strikes Back

Trump’s decision to repeatedly tweak Beijing’s nose was part of a calculated strategy.
By Benny Avni

You think you’re confused about President Trump? 

Imagine how they feel in Beijing.
They might’ve rejoiced this week when the new president fulfilled a campaign promise to undo the Trans Pacific Partnership. 

Obama designed the 12-country trade deal, in part, to reduce China’s economic clout.
So is Trump a China pushover? 

Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice thinks so. 

On Tuesday she tweeted, “Trashing Trans Pacific Partnership is a big fat gift to China, a blow to key allies, and a huge loss for American global leadership. So Sad!”
But wait. As Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Monday, the new administration will “make sure” China can no longer do as it pleases in international waters. 

Secretary of State-designate Rex Tillerson went further in his confirmation hearing, saying America will prevent China from accessing artificial islands it’s built in the South China Sea.
Add in Trump’s post-election phone call with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wei, and his announcement later that he intends to fully reexamine the Nixon-era “One China” policy, and you get a new tone that suggests the days of coddling and being cowed by China are numbered.
“Trump has already put the Chinese off their game,” says the Heritage Foundation’s James Carafano. 

“It really seems they don’t know what to make of him and how to best respond. They face a president who is willing to challenge them both on the military and economic [fronts], and they seem unprepared for that.”
Carafano, who has advised Trump’s transition team on foreign relations and national security, told me that once Cabinet secretaries and key members are confirmed and sworn in, China will be high on the agenda of the State and Defense departments.
It should. 

With growing economic clout and an increasingly aggressive military, China has emerged as a superpower-in-waiting.
Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis and White House strategist Steve Bannon (a former US Navy officer in the Pacific who reportedly has keen interest in China policy) will be busy. 

All are China hawks.
Mattis will be in Japan and South Korea next week to start coordinating military strategy with our Pacific allies.

Good. 

The time has come to add some hard power to Obama’s “pivot to Asia” — a great slogan that never really turned into anything tangible.
While Obama endlessly negotiated TPP with too many countries, America’s naval dominance of the Pacific faded. 

Yes, there was the occasional joint naval exercise with allies. 

But they weren’t enough to convince our partners we mean business when we insist on freedom of navigation on the high seas.
China has become more brazen, building artificial islands, fortifying them into military bases, setting up no-go naval passages and demanding planes identify themselves in skies China doesn’t own.
Without much resistance.
So, yes, the new administration will be wise to fill in the trade gap the TPP demise left behind. 

And fast, before China picks up the leftovers. (The Philippines, Malaysia and others are already looking to cut trade and other deals with Beijing.)
Trump must quickly start negotiating a bilateral trade deal with Shinzo Abe, Japan’s nationalist prime minister who isn’t afraid to challenge China.
A deal with Tokyo will help Trump set up agreements with other Pacific partners. 

Such deals can be tailored to each country’s needs (with “America first,” of course), which can be more beneficial to all than the overly complex, multilateral TPP.
At any rate, trade in the Pacific will only be possible if Beijing’s muscle-flexing is kept in check. 

Unless America resumes its role as the guarantor of free navigation, China will make the rules in the region. 

And China’s rules will make the protectionist Trump look like Thomas Paine.
If Team Trump’s initial tough talk gels into a detailed, coherent strategy, and if Trump keeps his campaign promise to increase military budgets, Pacific partners will once again trust America. 

Good trade agreements will follow.
All that, of course, depends. 

Will Trump concentrate on resisting China, or on his campaign-trail demand that allies pay us more for “their” defense? 

Will the Pacific disappear from our agenda before the next presidential campaign begins in earnest? Will coherent strategy replace tough talk?
That’s likely what they’re trying to figure out in Beijing as well.

The Necessary War

China and the U.S. poised to clash as never before
By Michael Den Tandt

Chinese warships take part in a drill on the South China Sea in 2016.
Canada is in a solid position, because of its robust imports of U.S. manufactured goods, to fend off the waves of protectionism now beginning to ripple outward from President Donald Trump’s White House.
The same can’t be said for the follow-on effects of looming U.S. trade actions against Mexico and China, which round out the list of America’s top three goods trading partners, alongside Canada.
Mexico, judging from recent signals emanating from the Trump administration, promises to be a pre-dinner snack on protectionist America’s plate. 

China is the main course. 

The president’s executive order withdrawing the United States from the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement, far from pulling America back from the Pacific region, sets the stage for an old-fashioned superpower standoff there.
Long before the TPP (which had comprised Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Chile, Mexico and Peru, Canada and the United States) ran afoul of right-wing nativists and left-wing populists in the United States, it was an Obama administration strategy for containing the increasing expansionism of Communist China.
The strategy’s most fervent advocates were the Japanese, led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. 

Taiwan was not invited to join TPP, doubtless because of the furious backlash this would have provoked from Beijing. 

Nevertheless the Taiwanese, led by President Tsai Ing-wen, had welcomed the pact because of the renewal of U.S. regional security guarantees it represented.
This is why, when Trump and Democratic party insurgent Bernie Sanders began looming large a year ago, both attacking the TPP, opinion leaders in Japan and Taiwan began feverishly speculating about the future of U.S. engagement in Asia.
The U.S. Navy is the guarantor of last resort for international law and international shipping through the South China Sea, worth an estimated US$5-trillion annually. 

China is attempting to assert a claim over much of that open ocean, contained by its so-called nine-dash line, as well as a group of small islets in the East China Sea in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture.
Chinese incursions into its neighbours' territory have become commonplace in recent years, causing Japan to re-garrison its farthest-flung islands. 

Regional nerves have been further frayed by the People’s Liberation Army’s rapid building of various regional shoals and reefs into what appear to be air strips and fuel depots.
During his campaign for the Republican nomination, adding to his barrage against the TPP, Trump asserted key Pacific allies such as Japan and South Korea weren’t pulling their weight and should be made to pay for protection, or do it themselves. 

The ensuing received wisdom has been that, under Trump, the U.S. would beat a gradual retreat from the Pacific, leaving a clear field for China to continue to grow its influence.
The missing piece in this assumption was trade — a fact made increasingly obvious as Trump cabinet nominees led by Defence Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have appeared before Congress. 

The president’s inaugural speech confirmed it.
The administration’s self-stated sine qua non is the resurrection of American manufacturing, which it hopes to bring about by reversing a significant goods trade deficit with Mexico, nearly $60-billion in 2015, and a massive goods trade deficit with China, $366-billion in 2015.
China’s export-driven economy has long relied heavily on access to the U.S. market for steady, rapid growth. 

But that expansion, formerly in double digits, has slowed in recent years as the Chinese economy matures. 

This irreversible slowdown has been posited by some analysts as the underlying reason for Xi Jinping’s heavy-handed assertion of control over all aspects of the Chinese state — and Beijing’s new restlessness with regional limitations on its influence. 

Any dramatic curb in Chinese exports to the United States is likely to exacerbate such pressures.
Ergo, all the signals coming from senior Trump administration officials — from the president himself, with his Taiwan-friendly Tweets, on down — are not of waning interest in the Pacific region, but waxing. 

Only rather than the softish power of multilateral trade ties, the primary instrument of American power projection will be military — aircraft carriers and nuclear deterrence.
Answering questions from journalists in Washington, D.C., Monday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said “we’re going to make sure we defend international territories,” echoing earlier remarks by Tillerson. 

Beijing responded Tuesday by saying its claims in the South China Sea are “irrefutable,” just as it has insisted that its claim to Taiwan, which it considers a wayward province, is non-negotiable.
The Trump administration’s first foreign policy statement, meantime, reads as follows: “Our Navy has shrunk from more than 500 ships in 1991 to 275 in 2016. Our Air Force is roughly one-third smaller than in 1991. President Trump is committed to reversing this trend, because he knows that our military dominance must be unquestioned.”
It boils down to this: Two superpowers possessed of the world’s largest economies, both nuclear-armed are about to clash — economically and strategically — as never before. 

Batten the hatches.