I would like tentatively to share some of the contents of the article carried in The Epoch Times dated April 4.
Beijing’s growing aggressiveness and military buildup in the South China Sea pose risks to the commercial interests and the security of many nations, and especially powers on friendly terms with the United States such as Japan, South Korea, and Australia.
This warning was made by security analyst Grant Newsham, who also said the moment was ripe for the United States to leverage its amicable relationship with Japan in order to deter Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aggression and uphold stability in the region.
He spoke to the significance of recent revelations by U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander Adm. John Aquilino that Beijing had fully militarized three artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea.
“China has expanded its ability to conduct military operations about 1,500 miles farther offshore from China. So now China can reach down to Australia, well into the Southwest Pacific, and off into the Central Pacific.
And from these bases, it can cause the Americans and America’s friends all sorts of problems,” Newsham, a senior fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies, recently told Epoch TV’s “Forbidden News” program.
Newsham described the islands as full-blown military outposts, one of them roughly equal to Washington D.C. in size, and another as big as the U.S. base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The outposts have 10,000-foot runways for military planes, anti-ship missiles, anti-aircraft systems, and maintenance facilities, he said.
