Author Gordon Chang told Newsmax on Monday that China committed “an act of war” by seizing debris from a Philippine vessel in the South China Sea.
“China provoked this incident, which, by the way, is an act of war,” Chang said on “American Agenda.”
He added, ”I think they did this in on the eve of the vice president’s visit” to the Philippines island of Palawan, which sits on the border of the South China Sea, “as a way of making life difficult for her.”
Chang said that while some might argue that “this is not a major incident, they just severed a toed line, but this really is an attack on a Philippine vessel. This is an act of war. We have seen the United States sort of slough off incidents like this in the past, and that has only encouraged China to act more belligerently because we've showed everybody in Beijing that aggression works, so this is leading to a really big bust up in the South China Sea. And, yes, the Chinese are aggressive, but we have permitted them to and we've created the conditions for war.
Chang later said, “We have a mutual defense treaty with the Philippines,” and said that if China “were going to be, for instance, [in] a war over Taiwan, we would need Philippine bases for the Navy and the Air Force.
He concluded, “the Philippines really is important because it is a South China Sea nation and it is strategically located so it does serve vital American interests.”
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Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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