Beijing on Wednesday clapped back at U.S. allegations that a Chinese fighter jet carried out an “unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” as it intercepted a U.S. Air Force plane last week. In a statement, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said the Chinese fighter “flew directly in front of the nose” of the American RC-135 over the South China Sea, “forcing the U.S. aircraft to fly through its wake turbulence.”
At a press briefing today, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning demanded that the U.S. stop its reconnaissance flights and insisted Beijing would continue to defend its sovereignty. “The U.S. should immediately stop these dangerous provocations,” Mao said. China claims ownership of almost all of the South China Sea, though such claims are not recognized internationally. China’s state-controlled Global Times newspaper on Wednesday cited an anonymous “military expert” in likening the U.S. to a “thief crying ‘stop thief.’” “If someone keeps wandering around on your doorsteps and taking photos all the time with obvious malicious intentions, it is not your fault if you make them go away,” the unnamed expert told the publication.
The end is near. Run for the hills. Each man for himself.
China is an expansionist, belligerent country. Even with the U.S. to keep it in check it’s trying to take ownership of huge portions of international waters by building and militarizing artificial islands. It is by far the biggest thief of technology in the world, with vast government resources devoted to stealing technology from all over the world and especially from the U.S. They manipulate their currency to maintain the huge trade imbalance the have with the U.S. They broke every pledge they made to allow the residents of Hong Kong to keep the liberties they’d enjoyed under the Brits. They exploit their prisoners for slave labor in unsafe conditions. They imprison their Uyghur minority in concentration camps. They support their fellow evildoer Putin in his invasion of Ukraine.
In a nutshell, they’re really bad guys, and the only thing that stops them from behaving even worse is the U.S.