Green Bay Packers

The old Green Bay Packers of Vince Lombardi’s day supposedly used to tell the opposing players what play they were going to run and dare them to stop it.  For those readers from around the world who may not be familiar with the reference, we’re talking about football (real football, not soccer) and, arguably, the greatest team to ever play the game.  You have to admire a team that is so good, so strong, so talented, and so determined that they’re willing to tell you the upcoming play because they don’t believe you can stop them even if you know what’s coming.  That’s power!

The Chinese just told us in no uncertain terms what’s coming.

As USNI website reports (1),

“The head of the People’s Liberation Army Navy told his U.S. counterpart that China has no intention of stopping its island building campaign in the South China Sea Spratly Islands …”

Well, that seems crystal clear.  The Chinese have claimed the entire South China Sea and all islands and features in it and are daring us to stop them. 

Yeah, but the Chinese are such friendly, reasonable, and peace-loving people the Chinese apologists assure us, maybe we misunderstood what was said.  Well, here it is stated another way.

““We will never stop our construction on the Nansha Islands [Spratly] halfway… the Nansha Islands are China’s inherent territory, and our necessary construction on the islands is reasonable, justified and lawful,” PLAN’s Wu Shengli told Richardson …”

Sure sounds like they're serious, right?  Still, they’re just harmless bases, aren't they?

“Wu also said that Beijing would reserve the right to increase defenses in the location”

OK, I guess they’re going to be major defense installations.

So, what will happen if the US doesn’t vacate the Sea and, instead, continues its sporadic and worse than useless Freedom of Navigation exercises?

““This kind of military freedom of navigation is damaging to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, and it could even play out in a disastrous way,” Adm. Sun Jianguo …”

China is telling us that they’re going to create an incident if we don’t capitulate.

This could not be any clearer.  China is telling us exactly what they’re going to do in the South China Sea because they don’t believe we can stop them.  It’s as simple as that.  They’ve slapped us in the face with a glove, told us their play, and are daring us to do anything about it.

America, your move.  What are you going to do?

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(1)USNI News website, “PLAN’s Wu to CNO Richardson: Beijing Won’t Stop South China Sea Island Building”, Sam LaGrone, July 18, 2016,

https://news.usni.org/2016/07/18/plans-wu-cno-richardson-beijing-wont-stop-south-china-sea-island-building

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