US B-52s Fly over China's 'Air Defense Zone'
NAHA, OKINAWA, JAPAN — An American carrier battle group and a flotilla of Japanese warships will arrive Wednesday near a vast stretch of ocean claimed by China in what is shaping up as a test of how Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the US will stand up to the challenge.

The joint US-Japan exercises in the sea are a direct challenge to China’s claim. On Tuesday, the US military said two Air Force B-52 bombers flew over the sea without notifying Beijing despite China’s demand that it be told if anyone plans to fly military aircraft over its self-claimed “air defense zone.”
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China has been laying claim to nearly 1 million square miles of ocean known as the East China Sea, insisting that the sea’s energy resources and fisheries belong to China. Much of the ocean territory it claims is hundreds of miles from its shore, including waters off the coasts of Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.

On Saturday China went further than ever, announcing it had designated much of the sea as an air-defense zone it controls. The zone includes the Japan-held Senkaku Islands, a string of uninhabited islets that China calls the Diaoyus. The Chinese Defense Ministry said the zone was created to “guard against potential air threats.”

fishlips wrote:Kennedy is dead.
You don't try and bluff the largest country in the world with the highest population of not only people but military trained people.
China has a population around 1,362,391,579, they are ants across the Globe.
If China, with all it's massive wealth and stash of U.S currency choose to stop supply of certain goods, the world would come to a stop like nothing we have seen before.
Not only would the world economy grind to a holt but our general life style, the likes of having refrigerators, TV's, solar panels, hot water, you name it would bring governments down.
We talk about the GFC, that would be a walk in the park compared to what China could do without even firing a shot, but what’s more, although being tough for them food wise, they can survive it as they have the assets and mental capacity of there roots.
These people will eat grasshoppers deep fried and love it.
Let them have the stupid islands off their coast in the China sea, there mostly rock in any case of little value.
Just my thoughts, I'm sick of conflicts.

MIKE JG wrote:China would ruin it's own economy if it decided to stop producing goods for the rest of the world.

China has HUGE problems looming, just getting fresh water and running toilets to 1.3B people is an enormous challenge. As they transition from an agricultural society to more of an urban society, I predict they will have serious problems.

There are entire cities in China that are empty, built with high rise apartments and all, and they are completely empty.

The real worry is what happens when 1.3B people decide that they don't want their voices censured any longer and that communism or whatever form of it the government there practices, decide to revolt.

THAT will be bad for the whole planet.