Quote:
Originally Posted by Officer of Engineers
Because all of them were pushing China around. Chinese fishing vessels were routinely boarded and the Captains arrested. The Japanese resorted to force over a civilian protest of the Daiyu Islands. And the Chinese sees the continued EP-3 patrols as a slap to their national prestige.
From the Beijing perspective, it is now time to push back.
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Assuming that states are rational actors at least most of the time, why is it time for China to push back? What benefits to the PRC were achieved by setting the stage for an arms race when massive internal problems still exist that would make far better and longer term strategic sense? The obvious answers that suggest themselves get me told I don't know what I am talking about but no one has yet to offer up the why. You or anyone can talk all day long about Chinese strategy, but where is the proof.
Based on the evidence the PRC like many nations appears content to gain short term domestic political favor at the cost of longer term strategic capability. That or the CCP is schizophrenic and the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing much of the time.