RISE FROM THE SEA

"Although the United States does not have an official position on the merits of the competing sovereignty claims, the islands are included within the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan, meaning that a defense of the islands by Japan would require the United States to come to Japan's aid."
More on these topics can be found here and here

While these island disputes seem relatively benign, in the last number of years China has been developing these disputed islands. They've also been hard at work dredging up the seafloor, building atop submerged rock and coral reefs. At a record pace, they're creating even more artificial islands. The Philippines, claiming some of these islands are within their territorial waters, brought a suit against China to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. On July 12, 2016, the international tribunal ruled against China, however, the superpower refused to acknowledge the decision or even the court’s jurisdiction.

What becomes even more concerning, is China has now militarized the islands. Earlier this year, they claimed that a U.S. Navy destroyer violated its sovereignty by sailing within 12 nautical miles of their installments on January 17th. China may be using it to signal future military deployments.





To put things into perspective, we need to ask ourselves why China has so much vested interest in that area... One reason might include more than $5.3 trillion worth of shipping travels through the sea each year... $1.2 trillion of this trade belongs to the United States.

RISING TIDES

With tensions between North Korea and America reaching new heights and the deployment of a US naval fleet to the region, China has had no small voice with concerns to that conflict as well. China and North Korea have a mutual defense treaty, which has allowed North Korea to continue it's weapons testing undeterred. Having a proxy, nuclear capable military power at your doorstep presents quite the convenience for China as well.

CHINA AND RUSSIA TRAIN FOR WAR WITH U.S. IF TRUMP INVADES NORTH KOREA

Combine everything in this article with Chinas aspirations to become
the worlds new petro currency,
their ability to
collapse the American dollar by dumping their treasury notes
and making moves to
standardize their currency to gold...

It just seems like everyone is setting up their pieces on the board.