U.S. officials claim that the tandem of B-52 bombers rumbling over the East China Sea Tuesday flew in a long-planned training exercise. It was not, so they say, a direct response to China’s recent audacious statement that international waters and the Senkaku Islands belong to China.
Previously planned or not, we do applaud this latter-day implementation of Teddy Roosevelt’s “Speak softly, and carry a big stick.”
By flying for an hour in midday across the airspace that China announced they would defend, the United States responded clearly and decisively to an attempt by Beijing to expand its authority in the region.
China has promised the world a “peaceful rise,” and that it will be a responsible stakeholder in world affairs.
All the while that it makes these promises, the actions of the ruling regime on the world stage have been aggressive on every front.
It steals Western technology shamelessly—according to cybersecurity experts at BlackOps Corporation, its thefts cost the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
It exports poisonous products, such as melamine-laced baby food, pet food, and candy, and lead-coated toys.
It breaks commitment after commitment it made when it joined the World Trade Organization, at every point pressing for the enforcement of WTO rules when it benefits China, while it flouts the rules that should restrain it. Within the world economy, it is a criminal enterprise that pursues trade in a way that only China profits. America has lost millions of jobs because of China’s shameless behavior.
When America and other Western companies invest in China, China looks on these companies as victims to be milked. Companies are stripped of their proprietary technology—some Western companies have been destroyed after setting up a Chinese operation—and soon find themselves competing in China against companies marketing their pirated products.
Besides ripping off the Western companies in China, Chinese businesses counterfeit any Western products they can get their hands on, costing Western companies huge losses. In addition, Western movies, music, and books—all are pirated. Intellectual property has no protection in China.
Its actions in the East China Sea are of a piece with how it has been behaving toward the world.
It bullies its weaker neighbors in the South China Sea, claiming as it own a huge swath of waters that no precedent in international law would justify.
If successful, China’s gambit of redefining the ownership of the seas would make all of the dynamic East Asian nations’ economies hostage. The Chinese navy would control the trade routes they all depend on—trade routes that the American Navy has protected, making possible the Asian economic explosion.
Some critics have said that China’s moves in the region mimic those of fascist Japan in wanting to set up a Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere—a claim by China that by right it is superior to all of its neighbors and deserves to dominate them in a sphere free of Western influence.
All the while, the United States has sought to engage China, to help it grow in a healthy direction by giving it the economic opportunity it needs to become wealthy. At the same time, the United States has encouraged China to liberalize its oppressive system.
China has taken advantage of the politics of engagement at every turn, and, using access to its markets as a trump card, even insisted that the United States and other Western nations be silent in judging its human rights abuses.
When two U.S. B-52 bombers flew across the East China Sea, the United States charted a different course in its relations.
Rather than playing the role of punching bag or milquetoast, it let the world know that China’s criminality is not to be tolerated. It pushed back. Bravo.
Stephen Gregory is Epoch Times deputy editor-in-chief
Friends Read Free