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Comment by 1stop | Hacker News Reader

I'm wondering if it has been reported everytime the US has deployed some defensive missile batteries around the world... Pretty much US aircraft carriers have more fire power then these batteries. Do we report their movement as hard as this?

Like is this just agg-prop to some anti China sentiment?

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It's news because it changes the balance of power in the South China Sea, waters that China has been gradually asserting are its own territorial waters rather than international waters governed by the United Nations. This assertion has China and the U.S. inching towards military confrontation, because if China's assertions become de facto reality Western sea and air access to important regional trade partners like Taiwan, the Philippines and Vietnam could be limited or cut off completely whenever Beijing feels like it.

There's a good timeline on how things have been playing out here: http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-south-china-sea-time...

The balance of power is unchanged. China can project their power around their borders much better than the US.

Right so the significant military assets the US have in Taiwan, Korea, and Japan go completely unreported.

Who is the biggest Western trading partner in the region?

This is newsworthy because the island exists within an area of overlapping territorial claims. The installation of the missiles is an escalation in an ongoing dispute.

So is NATO putting missiles into ex-Soviet states bordering Russia, but we don't see much on the new cold war with Russia on these pages.

Deploying missiles onto land that everyone agrees you own is one thing. Deploying missiles onto land that other people think they own, which could fire on planes flying over more land people disagree about, is clearly a different situation.

That said, I agree that the media under-reports provocative actions by groups we like.

Ah, you're right. Russia annexing Crimea outright and pseudo-annexing eastern Ukraine (and the resulting rise in tensions) is totally nothing like China annexing the Spratleys.

Well you say "land that everyone agrees you own" and yet that point of view was not unanimous (for example the Russians didn't think so). From the Chinese point of view, perhaps it seems like it is "land that everyone agrees [they] own".

From the international perspective, china unilaterally declared the islands sovereign territory, and specifically claimed there were no military intentions for the island. China has contradicted its previous claims, and alienated the neighboring territories by claiming disputed territory. The international community is understandably displeased with china.

The US certainly has its faults, but compared to China on human rights it is really no contest, especially as it pertains to the last 60 years. Mao's cultural revolution killed 30 Million people. Communism hosts a toxic culture incredibly prone to corruption.

So the reason China is horrible in 2016 is because of something it did in 1976?

The US had slavery, And attempted a genocide in their own country, can we count those things?

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