China Unveils "Magic" Island-Building Ship On Eve Of Trump Arrival

In a move that appears to validate Joint Chiefs Of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford’s concerns about China’s strategy of slowly expanding its territorial and military footprint in the Pacific, the Chinese government unveiled on Sunday a “magical” island-building ship on the eve of Donald Trump’s visit in a move likely to renew fears about its claims to territory in the South China Sea, the Financial Times reported.

Measuing 140 meters, the Tiankun is the biggest dredger in Asia, with cutters and pumps capable of smashing the equivalent of three Olympic pools of rock an hour from the sea floor and shooting it up to 15 kilometers away to create artificial land. Over the past five years, China has used similar vessels to create a string of strategic islands to support its claims to 85% of the territory in the South China Sea.

China has been widely criticized by the international community for its land-reclamation efforts in in the Spratley islands, where China has been building manmade bases over some of the since 2014. China has asserted its dominance of several groups of tiny islands in the South and East China Seas. China last year said it would not accept a ruling against it made in a key international legal case over the strategic reefs and atolls that China has asserted its authority over. In that ruling, the ICC decided that the islands belonged to the Philippines.

According to Newsweek, the US estimates China has added 3,200 acres of land on seven features (which includes rocky outcrops and reefs) over the past three years.

Between 2013 and the middle of 2016 - the peak phase of the island-building efforts - China created seven islands and reclaimed 2,000 acres, and built airfields, missile bases and radar systems.

Last year, Beijing appeared to signal it was halting large-scale dredging. However, the creation of the Tiankun would suggest otherwise. Launched at a shipyard in Jiangsu province on Friday, the Tiankun will enter service next year with Tianjin Dredging Company, an arm of state-owned China Communications Construction Company that has carried out most of the dredging in the South China Sea.

The Marine Design and Research Institute in Shanghai, which designed the vessel, described it as a “magic island-maker” on Saturday.

The US military has taken a more hard-line approach to China’s territorial claims in the Pacific since President Donald Trump took office. Since inauguration day, the US Navy has conducted at least four “freedom of operation” missions whereby US destroyers have sailed within 12 miles of the controversial islands. The most recent such mission occurred in mid-October. Each time, China has scrambled fighter jets and ships to intercept the US vessel.

As the FT pointed out, Washington’s opposition to China’s claims remains an irritant in bilateral relations, and the topic is expected to be an important point of discussion with Xi Jinping, China’s president, when Trump arrives in Beijing on Wednesday for a two-day visit.
 

US Aircraft Carrier Group Begins "Routine" Patrols In Disputed South China Sea

Threatening to destabilize the tentative improvement in Sino-US relations achieved in recent days following Trump"s recent concession over the "One China" policy, was the US deployment of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) to the disputed waters of the South China Sea on Saturday as part of maritime "routine operations", according to an announcement posted on the Vinson"s Facebook page.

Sailing with the 97,000-ton Vinson is the guided-missile destroyer USS Wayne E. Meyer, the Navy said in a statement. The Vinson carries a flight group of more than 60 aircraft, including F/A-18 jet fighters.

The deployment comes just one day after China wrapped up its own naval exercises in the South China Sea on Friday, CNN reported. War games involving its own aircraft carrier have unnerved neighbors with which it has long-running territorial disputes.

US aircraft carrier operations in the South China Sea are not unusual. Almost a year ago, the USS John C. Stennis led a similar cruise through the area. And the Vinson was in the South China Sea in 2015, just one of its 16 operations in the South China Sea in its 35-year history. The cruise of the Vinson in the South China Sea is the second of a high-profile US Navy vessel this month.

It also follows training operations in the South China Sea conducted by the littoral combat ship USS Coronado, which is temporarily based in Singapore, according to a Navy statement. "While underway, we are conducting training across multiple mission areas including weapons training, manned and unmanned flight operations, ship handling, and damage control drills," said Cmdr. Scott Larson, the Coronado"s commanding officer. "Training at sea in these warfare areas maintains crew proficiency and ensures we are ready to operate successfully in a variety of missions."

Quoted by the Navy News Service, Rear Adm. James Kilby, commander of the Vinson strike group, had a similar message: "The training completed over the past few weeks has really brought the team together and improved our effectiveness and readiness as a strike group," Kilby said in a statement. "We are looking forward to demonstrating those capabilities while building upon existing strong relationships with our allies, partners and friends in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region."

The operation, which is the latest test of Chinese response to US naval presence in the contested region comes amid growing tensions between the United States and China over territory and trade, and as the Trump administration looks set to take a more confrontational stance toward China than its predecessor. During his confirmation hearing, new Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said China should be blocked from accessing the artificial islands it"s built, setting the stage for a potential showdown.

As CNN reports, in a news conference Wednesday, China"s Foreign Ministry said it heard about the planned deployment of the Vinson days before it happened, and warned Washington against challenging its sovereignty.  "China respects and upholds the freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea, which countries enjoy under international law, but firmly opposes any country"s attempt to undermine China"s sovereignty and security in the name of the freedom of navigation and overflight," China"s Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said.

In an overnight op-ed in the nationalistic Global Times tabloid, China wrote that it "should strongly object to the US in this case. Having freedom of navigation is reasonable in certain areas in the open sea. But, in an exclusive economic zone over which a country has exclusive rights to explore and use the marine resources, the US" freedom of navigation does not apply and it may harm the economic interests of other countries."

In the past few years, the US administration under then president Barack Obama limited the US Navy operations in disputed areas such as the Nansha Islands and did not perform freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea from 2012 to 2015 so as to avoid unnecessary clashes. 

After all, frequent US activities in the waters can easily lead to clashes with China. Obama"s restriction has to some extent prevented such scenario from happening. Recently, a Chinese early warning aircraft nearly collided with a US Navy patrol plane. In matters like this, Trump needs to learn from his predecessor.

The contested waters are a key shipping route at the heart of a territorial dispute that pits multiple countries against one another. China has a long history of maritime disputes with its South China Sea neighbors. China claims almost all of the South China Sea, including islands more than 800 miles from the Chinese mainland, despite objections from neighbors such as the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam.

Beijing has also created artificial islands in the area, outfitting some of them with military features. According to the US, China has reclaimed more than 3,000 acres in the Spratly Islands since 2014. In December, satellite imagery released by Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative showed China has installed weapon systems on all seven artificial islands.

Though the US takes no position on the territorial dispute in the South China Sea, its warships have conducted routine "freedom of navigation" operations near the reclaimed islands, eliciting warnings from Beijing. The most recent of those was in October by the guided-missile destroyer USS Decatur. China at the time called it a serious breach of law and an intentional provocation. There is no word whether the Vinson or the Meyer would be getting near the Chinese-claimed islands.

In a preemptive move to limit foreign naval presence in proximity to China and the disputed South and East China Sea islands, last Thursday China"s People"s Daily reported the Beijing is set to revise its 1984 Maritime Traffic Safety Law, which would allow the relevant authorities to "bar some foreign" (read U.S.) ships from passing through Chinese territorial waters. The Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council announced Tuesday it is soliciting public opinions on the revisions. Think of it as an Air Defense Identification Zone, only in the water. China has yet to make a formal decision.

The latest distribution of US naval forces around the globe is shown in the map below.

War Rhetoric Between the U.S. And China Is Finally Starting to Cool Down

February 6, 2017   |   James Holbrooks

(ANTIMEDIA) Beijing — In a state-run editorial on Monday, China praised comments made by Secretary of Defense James Mattis over the weekend. Mattis suggested the hotly disputed issue of the South China Sea should be handled diplomatically rather than through warfare.

Calling the defense secretary’s words a “mind-soothing pill” that “dispersed the clouds of war that many feared were gathering over the South China Sea,” the China Daily hinted at a warming in U.S.-China relations.

“Mattis has inspired optimism here that things may not be as bad as previously portrayed,” the state-controlled newspaper wrote.

Stating Mattis’s remarks were “worthy of affirmation,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang echoed this sentiment at a press briefing. The spokesman said the U.S. defense secretary’s comments align “with the common interests of China and all countries in the region” and reiterated the Chinese desire for outside nations to “respect the joint interests and wishes of countries in the region.”

While seemingly conciliatory, these words from an official Chinese spokesman also seem to imply that every Pacific Rim nation wishes to voluntarily adhere to the “One China” policy the superpower is seeking to establish. And that, as the United States under the leadership of Donald Trump seems vehement upon proving, is simply not the case.

In fact, even as James Mattis was suggesting over the weekend that between the U.S. and China, the diplomatic road was the one to take on the issue of territorial sovereignty, he was also accusing the Asian superpower of using coercion to force its will upon neighboring countries.

“We have watched in the South China Sea as China has shredded the trust of nations in the region,” Mattis said at the conference in Tokyo, “apparently trying to have veto authority over security and economic conditions of neighboring states.”

Providing further evidence that tensions are invariably rising between China and the United States — despite what government officials on both sides might happen to say at a given time — Fox News reported Monday that three Chinese warships have just sailed into the East China Sea.

It would be difficult to argue the timing is coincidental, as just two days before, the U.S. solidified its security commitments to ally Japan. And those commitments essentially back up the claim that Japan — not China — has a sovereign claim to the contested Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.

In effect, it’s the same fundamental disagreement over two different bodies of water — both of which are in one region. And it’s a region neither the United States nor China appears willing to cede control over.

This article (War Rhetoric Between the U.S. And China Is Finally Starting to Cool Down) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to James Holbrooks and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article to edits@theantimedia.org.

China Just Sent a Forceful Message to the U.S. In the East China Sea

February 6, 2017   |   James Holbrooks

(ANTIMEDIA) East China Sea — Following comments made by Donald Trump’s secretary of defense, James Mattis, over the weekend, in which he reaffirmed the United States’ security commitments to Japan, Fox News reported Monday that China has just sent warships steaming through the disputed waters of the East China Sea.

From that report:

“Three Chinese warships sailed near the contested Senkaku Islands Monday, in a rare move apparently sending a message to the U.S. just two days after President Trump’s defense secretary visited Japan and vowed to protect the islands.

“The ships sailed within Japan’s territorial waters some 12 nautical miles off the islands in the South China Sea, roughly 140 miles northeast of Taiwan, a U.S. defense official told Fox News.”

On Saturday, while speaking in Tokyo, Mattis hailed the relationship between the U.S. and Japan as “an example for other nations to follow,” vowing that the Trump administration is dedicated to maintaining order in that region of the world.

“The U.S.-Japan alliance is critical to ensuring that this region remains safe and secure—not just now, but for years to come,” the defense secretary told reporters at a joint conference with his Japanese counterpart.

At that same conference, however, Mattis took a shot at China — more directly, the superpower’s “One China” policy — claiming the country is using coercion to enforce its will upon its neighbors.

“We have watched in the South China Sea as China has shredded the trust of nations in the region,” Mattis said, “apparently trying to have veto authority over the security and economic conditions of neighboring states.”

In response to those comments, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang stated:

“We urge the U.S. side to take a responsible attitude, stop making wrong remarks…and avoid making the issue more complicated and bringing instability to the regional situation.”

Now, hours later, China is sailing warships through the East China Sea.

As Anti-Media has reported, tensions between the U.S. and China have been rising since Donald Trump entered the White House. At its core, the issue is one of conflicting ideologies — Trump’s nationalistic “America First” policy versus a “One China” doctrine that embraces economic globalization.

Many are concerned, however, that the dispute over trade could spill over into a violent confrontation, as neither of the two superpowers appears willing to back down from their positions. As such, and as military newspaper Stars and Stripes writes, Mattis’ re-commitment to Japan on the issue of security speaks directly to that potentiality:

“If the Pentagon named bilateral talks the way it did military operations, Jim Mattis’ first trip abroad as defense secretary might have been deemed Operation Allied Assurance.”

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China Responds to US Posturing, Unveils Nuclear Missile System Capable of Hitting US Bases in Asia

China — Beijing has now surreptitiously revealed a highly accurate ballistic missile system with a range long enough to directly threaten Taiwan, the hotly disputed South China Sea, the Philippines, and Japanese and U.S. military bases in Asia — including Okinawa — with a nuclear first strike.

Increasingly bellicose posturing between President Donald Trump’s administration and the Chinese government over iterations of a trade war, as well as Beijing’s aggression in the South and East China Seas, have spawned rumors of potential military conflict between the world’s two largest economies.

With such an accurate nuclear-capable missile system ready for deployment within range of targets sensitive to U.S. interests, perhaps it’s time to pay attention.

According to the Associated Press, “The medium-range DF-16 featured in a video posted last week on the Defense Ministry’s website showing the missiles aboard their 10-wheeled mobile launch vehicles being deployed in deep forest during exercises over the just-concluded Lunar New Year holiday.

“While the Rocket Force boasts an extensive armory of missiles of various ranges, the DF-16 fills a particular role in extending China’s reach over waters it seeks to control within what it calls the ‘first-island chain.’”

Able to strike targets as far away as 1,000 kilometers (620 feet), the missiles can’t be stopped by several defense systems used by Taiwan.

“It also carries up to three warheads weighing as much as a ton and carrying conventional high explosives or a nuclear weapon. Further increasingly its lethality, the missile is believed to be accurate to within as little as 5 meters (16 feet) of the target, similar to that of a cruise missile,” the AP reports.

Like many nations, China has been known for blustery rhetoric — but intense escalation and braggadocio from the incoming president have soured Beijing to Washington.

“The Chinese government is quite concerned about the potential for direct confrontation with the Trump administration,” Ian Bremmer, president and founder of the global political risk consultant, Eurasia Group, and inventor of the Global Political Risk Index, told CNBC in an email in late January.

“Chinese officials are preparing for the worst, and they expect to retaliate decisively in response to any U.S. policies they perceive as against their interests.”

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In particular, the presence of U.S. Navy ships in the South China Sea has incensed Beijing, who claims the waters as Chinese. To the consternation of U.S. allies South Korea and Japan, among others, China constructed islands in disputed waters and proceeded to equip them with military hardware and airplane landing strips.

China’s new nuclear-capable missiles could easily be used — in what Beijing feels is self-defense — should the U.S. accidentally or intentionally tread too far over the line.

And China isn’t alone in preparing for a possible military escalation — of nuclear proportions.

In fact, the U.S. Congress instructed the Pentagon’s Strategic Command, via the 2017 NDAA, to assess the ‘survivability’ of both Russian and Chinese leaders in the event of a nuclear strike. Although such an assessment could be considered standard for nuclear powers, the timing intimates the use of strategic nuclear weapons could be the subject of debate behind closed doors in Washington.

As bluster ratchets up between the U.S. and China, overtones of potential nuclear war cannot be dismissed as incidental.

US Now Assessing Effectiveness of Dropping Nukes on Russia & China — Seriously

Amid heightening tensions with China and in the wake of accusations Russia somehow interfered in the election, U.S. Congress has instructed intelligence agencies and the Pentagon’s Strategic Command to assess the ‘survivability’ of Chinese and Russian leaders in the event of an above- or below-ground nuclear strike.

Under ordinary circumstances, such a review could be considered routine, but — given President Donald Trump’s ratcheting up of hostilities with China and the Democratic establishment’s scapegoating of Russia for its own shortcomings — it seems more an indication the U.S. could be preparing for war.

Interestingly, the plan for this analysis came buried in the 2017 NDAA, which former President Barack Obama signed into law two days before Christmas — timing almost certainly intended to deflect attention from several unsavory measures buried in the law’s pages.

This review, had it garnered attention, surely would have set off further debate on the perilous provocation to war with nuclear capable nations.

According to the NDAA, reviewers will perform “an identification of which facilities various senior political and military leaders of each respective country are expected to operate out of during crisis and wartime” and, additionally, the “location and description of above-ground and underground facilities important to the political and military leadership survivability.”

“Key officials and organizations of each respective country involved in managing and operating such facilities, programs, and activities” will also be identified by analysts.

Bloomberg reports, “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.’”

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Strategic Command will also evaluate how Chinese and Russian plans relate to the post-nuclear deployment plans of the United States.

“Our experts are drafting an appropriate response,” Strategic Command spokesman Navy Captain Brook DeWalt told Bloomberg in an email, adding, “it’s premature to pass along any details at this point, we can update you further at a later date.”

Written before Trump took office, the planned analysis nevertheless aligns with the president’s statement the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be strengthened — despite his stated goal of rapprochement with Russia.

In December, he told MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe, “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.” And in a brazen tweet the same month, Trump declared, “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”

On Friday, Trump ordered Secretary of Defense 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.”

Ohio Representative Michael Turner, who sits on the House Armed Service Committee’s Strategic Forces panel, told Bloomberg via email 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.”

China and Russia, he continued, “have invested considerable effort and resources into understanding how we fight, including how to interfere with our leadership’s communication capabilities.

“We must not ignore gaps in our understanding of key adversary capabilities.”

While posturing about Russia being responsible for hacking and otherwise manipulating either the election or the U.S. populace has subsided since Trump took office, the president has intensified hostilities with China over trade, as well as maritime territorial issues in the South and East China Seas.

Russia and the U.S. ostensively possess some 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons — but Moscow has reportedly spent a great deal of time and money upgrading and improving its arsenal, where the U.S. has not.

Assessing the plans of world leaders in the event military action turns nuclear indicates the use of these weapons remains a viable option.

“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,” Bloomberg reports.

With a cascade of contentious executive actions coming nearly every day since Trump took the oath of office, vigilance — particularly concerning bellicose exchanges between the U.S. and China or Russia — is an absolute imperative.

As Americans Debate Immigration, China Says War With US is Now ‘Reality’

Discussing the United States and rapidly accelerating tensions, an article appearing on the Chinese army’s website, states, “The possibility of war increases.”

And China is preparing itself accordingly.

Liu Guoshun, a member of the national defense mobilization unit of China’s Central Military Commission, reports CNBC, penned the editorial on the day President Donald Trump took the oath of office.

His characterization of U.S.-Chinese relations evinces how much has unraveled between the two nations over the potential looming trade war — China is preparing itself for military action.

“‘A war within the president’s term,’” Liu asserted, “‘war breaking out tonight’ are not just slogans, but the reality.”

Although the opinion piece certainly sends an ominous message, Ian Bremmer, president and founder of the global political risk consultant, Eurasia Group, and inventor of the Global Political Risk Index, believes it to be more bluster than outright bellicosity. However, China’s long habit of posturing seems to be nearing an end.

“The Chinese government is quite concerned about the potential for direct confrontation with the Trump administration,” Bremmer told CNBC by email.

Egged on by Trump’s indiscriminate bashing of China, Beijing may be nearing the point of intolerance — and could act out in a military show of force.

“Chinese officials are preparing for the worst,” Bremmer continued, “and they expect to retaliate decisively in response to any U.S. policies they perceive as against their interests.”

Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea have further degenerated already cool relations with the U.S., as South Korea, in particular, has turned to American aid to protect its interests in the international waters.

China ramped up hostility by refusing to recognize the South China Sea as international waters per a ruling last year — and has continued construction on a series of manmade islands. The nascent Trump administration has already provoked vociferous condemnation from Beijing for vowing to prevent Chinese aggression in that region.

Asked if he agreed with Secretary of State and former Exxon Mobil CEO, Rex Tillerson, that China should not have access to its constructed islands, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer asserted,

“The U.S. is going to make sure that we protect our interests there.”

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Some of the manmade islands have been outfitted with landing strips and stocked with military weaponry — sufficient for Beijing to claim the U.S. would have to “wage war” to stop it from maintaining access.

CNBC reports, “The U.S. needs China’s cooperation to keep North Korea’s nuclear threats in check. But challenges to the U.S.’s ‘One China policy’ that does not officially recognize Taiwan’s independence — a red-line issue for Beijing — could also add to tensions.”

Provocation over the South China Sea, trade, Taiwan, and more — even of the semantic variety Trump has limited himself to thus far — could spark a response from Beijing in the future.

“China doesn’t want trouble with the U.S., especially not in the run up to their own leadership transition this fall,” Bremmer told CNBC. “But if it comes, they want President Trump to understand the consequences.”

As part of the escalating conflict over trade between the two largest economies on the planet, Beijing has been deeply critical of inefficiencies of so-called Western Democracy and corporatist capitalism.

“Western-style democracy has played a progressive role in history, but right now it has heavy drawbacks,” Communist Party secretary of the Beijing Foreign Studies University, Han Zhen, wrote in an editorial for the People’s Daily, cited by CNBC.

Some analysts feel Beijing might be opportuning contention in the United States over the election and subsequent executive actions by Trump to insert commentary favorable to its interests while shining a negative light on the West.

“I think they’re just trying to take advantage of what looks like a disorderly transition in the U.S. and a great anxiety around the world about what a Trump administration looks like,” noted Scott Kennedy, director of the Project on Chinese Business and Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as CNBC reports.

“When you have a country like China whose growth is slowing with massive debt, with concerns of its neighbors as it moves to become more powerful, I don’t know if it’s the right time for China to be strongly promoting its system relative to others.

“Democracy isn’t meant to be efficient,” Kennedy explained in an answer to Chinese criticisms. “It’s meant to reflect diversity, have checks and balances on power and proceed in a manner where everyone has a say.”

China, in the meantime, has continued limited missile tests and made its military prowess known to Taiwan and parties present in the South China Sea. While belligerence has thus far been limited to talk, were the Trump administration take a tangibly aggressive stance in the South China Sea, China’s military will apparently be more than prepared to respond in kind.

China Just Sent the Most Chilling Message yet over US-Taiwan Relations

January 9, 2017   |   James Holbrooks

(ANTIMEDIA) Beijing — On Sunday, directly on the heels of Taiwanese President Tsai-Ing wen’s controversial meeting with U.S. lawmakers in Houston, a state-run Chinese tabloid ran an editorial warning that China would “take revenge” if the U.S. abandoned its one-China policy.

“Trump is yet to be inaugurated, and there is no need for Beijing to sacrifice bilateral ties for the sake of Taiwan,” writes the Global Times. “But in case he tears up the one-China policy after taking office, the mainland is prepared.”

The editorial goes on to state that “Beijing would rather break ties with the US if necessary” and that continuing collaboration between U.S. and Taiwanese officials will “ruin Sino-US relations and destabilize the entire Asia-Pacific region.”

Later in the piece, however, the Times discards pretense and assumes a more threatening tone:

“If Trump reneges on the one-China policy after taking office, the Chinese people will demand the government to take revenge. There is no room for bargaining.”

The opinion of the Global Times, as Reuters points out, does not necessarily equate to the official stance of the Chinese government. It is, however, a state-controlled outlet, and the editorial undeniably reflects the mounting tension between China and the U.S. over the issue of Taiwan.

China views the nation of Taiwan — whose foundation was laid in 1949, when the official Chinese government was forced to flee to the island to escape the Communists — as an official Chinese province. This is the root of the one-China policy, which the U.S. has long adhered to.

This all began to change when incoming President Trump broke protocol, as highlighted by a Washington Post piece on Monday.

“Tensions regarding U.S.-Chinese-Taiwanese relations have been high since early December,” the Post writes, “when President-elect Donald Trump accepted a phone call from Tsai, breaking with nearly four decades of protocol in speaking directly with the Taiwanese leader.”

The situation intensified during the weeks that followed, most notably due to the Taiwanese president’s announcement that she would stop over in Houston to meet with Texas lawmakers on her way to Central America. This prompted the Chinese General Consul of Houston to send a letter to one of those lawmakers, Senator Ted Cruz, asking him not to meet with Tsai.

The senator ignored that request, however, and he and Governor Greg Abbott met with Tsai on Sunday. Within hours, the Global Times editorial warning the U.S. against taking actions counter to the “obligation of US presidents to maintain China-US relations” had been published.

In a statement, however, Senator Cruz made it clear the United States will not be told with whom it can and cannot meet.

“The People’s Republic of China needs to understand that in America we make decisions about meeting with visitors for ourselves,” the statement reads. “This is about the U.S. relationship with Taiwan, an ally we are legally bound to defend. The Chinese do not give us veto power over those with whom we meet. We will continue to meet with anyone, including the Taiwanese, as we see fit.”

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This article (China Just Sent the Most Chilling Message yet over US-Taiwan Relations) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to James Holbrooks and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article to edits@theantimedia.org.