China has a lot on their domestic plate. The regime is in danger due to its incompetent handling of the Wuhan virus. The regime feels threatened. A symptom of this is their draconian law regarding Hong Kong. If they didn’t feel their survival was at stake, they would have handled the Hong Kong protests with more patience and invisible leverage. The danger to the regime is entirely internal. The ongoing disaster at the world’s largest dam, even if it doesn’t collapse, will affect 200 million Chinese. Therefore, the regime is trying to focus the anger of the Chinese people outward. They tried creating an international incident with India. That backfired in a big way. They have ramped up threats to Taiwan and that isn’t working out well either. Now, they are threatening the other countries near them over the control of a portion of the sea lanes. This all smacks of desperation. Will they actually go to war when their entire country appears to be metaphorically burning down around them? That’s hard to say.
What is certain, if the US cedes control over that area to China then China will indeed become a big player. Their new income will be from tribute paid by shippers over the yearly trillion plus dollars worth of goods that must use that waterway. We are in the situation France was in around 1938/39. They could have stopped Hitler with little effort and no lives lost. By waiting and appeasing, they caused World War II to happen.
There are probably no good, easy decisions to make here. Anything done, or anything not done, will come at a cost. We either pay now or later. The longer we wait, the higher the cost.
Great post
I believe that the current Chinese youth eschew the Communist totalitarian control and are a simmering stew of discontent. The task for the party is to pacify this discontent while maintaining absolute control.