It's a sobering reminder of how powerful the western media is at shaping people's views and even their memories that well read members of this board could fall prey to their manipulations
Those who are voicing the belief that China somehow planned the SCS disputes as a challenge to the US is simply unwittingly parroting the lies force fed to them daily by the western media.
China did not choose to make the SCS a flashpoint, the US did.
Even a few years ago, no one was concerned about the SCS. Then suddenly its importance shot to prominence seemingly overnight, and that happened even before China started building islands.
The biggest triggers to the heightening of tensions are twofold.
The first event, which while did not directly trigger Chinese plans for the SCS, most certainly, and in my view, most fundamentally changed China's entire mindset towards the current international order, which underlies more recent Chinese actions.
This seismic event is none other than Japan's nationalisation of the Diaoyu Islands.
In doing so, Japan tore up one of the fundamental cornerstones of Sino-Japanese post war relations. But it was the western reaction to that incident with had by far the biggest impact on Chinese strategy.
Before the Diaoyu incident, Chinese policy toward territorial disputes was consistent across the board. China favoured bilateral, peaceful negotiations to settle disputes, but did not really see any urgency in settling disputes, and was happy to leave disputes unresolved and focused more on improving trade and diplomatic relations.
Part of that was strategic, because time was on China's side. The longer China left a dispute unresolved, the stronger its negotiating position when the two sides to eventually come together to resolve it. But part of it was also hopeful, that as the trade grows between China and its neighbours, so would goodwill and understanding. So a bitter dispute might be resolved more easier if the two peoples are more friendly towards each other.
In the meantime, it was adopting a purposefully low-key approach towards the disputes, favouring to agree to disagree and not press its claims to hard as to damage broader relations.
Not only did the west unanimously give China zero credit for its past self restrain and maturity in handling disputes, it went so far as to try and twist that to use to weaken Chinese claims.
It was western leaders and diplomats who first stressed the paramount importance of demonstrating effective control, and argued that because Japane demonstrated effective control of the Diaoyu Islands while China had not, that Japan has the stronger claim irrespective of the historical and legal claims China might have. They tried to spin it as China acquiescing to Japan's claims becomes it only made diplomatic protests to Japanese control and never tried to physically challenge Japanese control.
In effect, the west told China that might equals right. It didn't matter that China could point to history and actual treaties which support its claims to the Diaoyu islands, all that matters was that Japan had demonstrated actual control.
It was a stunning development for China, because before that, the dominant view within China was that the west respected laws and treaties.
Immediately after that, China started routine patrols to the Diaoyu islands to demonstrate its own effective control, and to challenge Japanese control.
As such, when the second major development came in the form of Hillary sticking her nose into the SCS disputes by sabotaging a grand bargain China was on the very cusp of signing with the other claimants to peacefully resolve the SCS territorial disputes, alarm bells started to go off in Beijing.
Determined not to be caught out by the same trick twice, China's answer to American interference in the SCS was to demonstrate and extert actual physical control.
The distances and logistics involved has always been the Achilles' heel in China's ability to effectively monitor the SCS. Which is how Vietnam and others have been able to steal so many islands.
They can occupy and fortify features before China could find out about it, at which point they would already be dug in and established and China could not evict them without resorting to using direct force, which China has been hesitant to do so far.
The solution to that problem is for China to turn the features it does control into enormous FOBs, from where China could not only effectively monitor the activities of others, but also have forces ready yo stop them from being able o seize more features.
Thanks to the western media's relentless efforts, the entire narrative has been turn out its head when they explain how the SCS dispute first developed.
It was never China who was looking to cause trouble, it makes zero sense for anyone to be setting fires on their own doorsteps.
It has always been America that has been the driving force in both elevating the status of the dispute, and in heightening tensions by enouraging and aiding those with rival disputes against China to press their claims as forcefully as possible.
The reason for all of this, the Americans gave away themselves with their endless stressing of the value of shipping that goes through the SCS and its importance.
However, the fundamentally important detail censored from western news reports is the fact that the overwhelming majority of that shipping is Chinese.
The real narrative of the SCS dispute isn't one of China trying to put a death choke on world shipping and America heroically resisting as the western media would have you believe. Instead it's pretty much the reverse, with America seeking to control the Chinese trade jugular that is the SCS by actively encouraging land grabs by allies and client states in the SCS, to allow them to threaten Chinese trade by proxy if necessary, and China having absolutely none of it.
