THE EMPIRE SUN OF CHINA RISING ACROSS EAST ASIA AS IT BULLIES ITS WAY GRABBING TAKING WHAT IT SEES FIT TO TAKE AWAY FROM THE WEAK SURROUNDING COUNTRIES AS THE MILITARY BUILD UP GROWS IN ASIA TO COUNTER CHINA FROM KOREA, JAPAN, AUSTRALIA, TAIWAN, SINGAPORE–CHINA TO RECLAIM ITS PLACE IN THE WORLD AS ITS WORLD RULER STARTING FIRST IN ASIA WITH THE TAKING OF THE SPRATLY ISLANDS, PARACEL ISLANDS, SCARBOROUGH SHOAL WITH THE ISLAND HOPPING CAMPAIGN ACROSS THE SOUTH CHINA SEA AND EAST CHINA SEA WITH FLIGHT RESTRICTIONS–CONSIDER VIETNAM TROOPS SHOT BY CHINESE SOLDIERS FOR PLANTING ITS FLAG IN 1988 ON THE REEF FIERY CROSS–AND THE EXPANSION CONTINUES FOLLOWING THE EMPERIAL JAPAN CONQUEST OF 1930–AS CHINA GROWS ITS NAVAL FORCES IN THE HAINAN

China’s land grab in the South China Sea

……There is nothing more central to the China dream than China’s idea of its rightful place in the world – which, Chinese people are relentlessly taught, they were robbed of first by European imperialism and then by an American-imposed Asian order that has been in place since the end of the second world war. Prior to this, for nearly the entire run of their nation’s long history, save for the occasional parenthetical setback, the Chinese understand themselves to have enjoyed well-deserved paramountcy in the vastness of the east. This has meant not just preeminence, but deference from neighbours eager to curry favour and share in the fruits of China’s brilliant culture.

“In East Asia’s tribute system, China was the superior state, and many of its neighbouring states were vassal states, and they maintained a relationship of tribute and rewards,” writes Liu Mingfu, a retired People’s Liberation Army colonel, in The China Dream, a hugely popular recent book that lays out plans for the country’s return to preeminence. “This was a special regional system through which they maintained friendly relations and provided mutual aid. The appeal and influence of ancient China’s political, economic and cultural advantages were such that smaller neighbouring states naturally fell into orbit around China, and many of the small countries nominally attached to China’s ruling dynasty sent regular tribute … The universal spread of China’s civilisation and the variety of nations that sent emissaries to China were simply a reflection of the attractiveness of the central nation, and the admiration that neighbouring countries had for China’s civilisation.”

It is true that many territories paid tribute to China, which they may have judged to be a small price for gaining access to trade with the world’s richest economy. But it is also true that China often used force to gain dominance over others, whether the Koreans or the Burmese or, most famously, Vietnam, which China occupied for 1,000 years. Through the teaching of history in this selective fashion, however, Chinese supremacy is made to appear to be the natural order of things, and never something that was forcibly imposed; hegemony, in Chinese usage, is a state of affairs that can only result from the actions of ill-intentioned foreigners…..

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/28/whats-behind-beijings-drive-control-south-china-sea-hainan