According to recent reporting from the Lude Media network inside China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are planning to instigate conflict in the South China Sea by triggering friction between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Japan.
Stirring up trouble over the disputed Senkaku Islands and various atolls and coral reefs will be used in an attempt to provoke Japan to fight back. Then, per this reported plan, the CCP will attempt to resurrect regional tensions dating back to World War II by accusing Japan of “new Japanese militarism.”
According to a June 1 article at The Gateway Pundit, the PRC in fact may already have begun such provocations in waters that include the East and South China Sea as well as the Philippine Sea and Pacific Ocean.
As these waters include many atolls, coral reefs and islands that are disputed among China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, Beijing’s strategy is to take advantage of conflicting claims to extend its reach while protesting that such matters are questions of international jurisdiction under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
The five uninhabited Senkaku Islands, for example, lie in the East China Sea between Japan, the People’s Republic of China, and the Republic of China (Taiwan), and involve territorial disputes among them all.
Beijing is counting on other regional powers like Taiwan refraining from becoming involved to avoid being labeled as supporting Japanese “militarism.”
If, however, Taiwan should declare its support for Japan, then the CCP will depend on subversive operations inside Taiwan to provoke internal opposition to such a policy, including within the Taiwanese military.
Also referred to as Okinotorishima, the reef is under Japanese administration and comprised two large rocks surrounded and enlarged by an array of tetrapod-cement structures that protected the reef from being swamped by the waters of high tide. The Chinese ships allegedly bombed the tetrapod structures before being challenged by one nearby Japanese military ship and a Japanese civilian fishing vessel, which were quickly surrounded by the Chinese ships before withdrawing from the area.
More Japanese naval vessels were called to the scene, but by the time they arrived, the Chinese ships had already left. Having destroyed the protective tetrapod structures, however, Beijing appears poised to claim boundary issues regarding the now-exposed coral reef.
The only international coverage of this incident thus far seems to come from two CCP-controlled media outlets: the Chinese international English language state-run cable TV news service, CGTN, based in Beijing and owned by the Chinese state media China Central, and the South China Morning Post.
In a June 2 article, the CGTN headline protested that “Japan must respect legality of jurisdictional waters.” Beijing claims that Japan has no “entitlement” to an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) around the Okinotori reef and as expected refers to the UNCLOS.
In the broader East Asia region, among countries and regions that were invaded by Japan during World War II, Beijing intends to cover its aggressive moves by reviving animosities from the so-called “War Against Japanese Aggression.”
CCP propaganda will seek to provoke fear of being encroached upon by Japan again and present China and the PLA as regional defenders. Beijing’s objective is to unify the entire Indo-Pacific region under Chinese domination by removing and excluding the U.S., Japan and their allies entirely from the area.
This new information follows on earlier reporting based on a 14 May 2022 audio recording that was leaked out of a top-level CCP-PLA meeting in Beijing, where plans were discussed to move China from peacetime to a war footing as early as this month.
Per the audio recording of that meeting, Beijing intends to attack Taiwan no later than November and attempt to sweep the South China Sea clear of U.S., Japanese, Taiwanese and all other naval vessels of allied powers.
In a perhaps not-unrelated development, just days before the reported PLA action against Okinotori-shima, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken laid out the Biden administration’s China policy.
Described as “Invest. Align. Compete,” the policy, heavy on appeasement, explicitly states that the U.S. wants to avoid conflict and “wouldn’t interfere with China’s ascent to great power status.” Blinken also made clear that the U.S. seeks to invest in Chinese industries, not decouple from them.
Missing was any mention of tough measures to clamp down on companies using slave labor in China or the CCP’s rampant theft of U.S. firms’ intellectual property. Apparently, the globalist elements of the Biden administration won out in in their effort to prioritize climate change over national security.
This column was originally published at Newsmax
The views expressed in CCNS member articles are not necessarily the views or positions of the entire CCNS. They are the views of the authors, who are members of the CCNS.
