Despite the U.S. rhetoric depicting a recent flyover by two U.S. bombers near Chinese islands in the South China Sea as unintended, it is clear to all that the incident was as intended as every other maneuver by Washington aimed at sustaining its global hegemony.
In the past several months, the United States has escalated tension in the area by sending warships and military planes on patrol missions there, under the pretext of safeguarding the freedom of navigation.
As shown by some cases, the U.S. military appears to have developed a liking for sailing near or flying over Chinese islands in the South China Sea.
Perhaps the United States, after citing the freedom of navigation as an excuse for so long, is getting tired of using the term to justify such actions. For the two B-52 bombers' incursion, it has come up with a new explanation: The aircraft may have strayed off course due to bad weather.
However, according to military experts, the odds are low that a strategic bomber like the B-52 has to change route simply because of weather conditions.
In fact, the South China Sea is not the only area in which the United States has rolled out harmful measures in contradiction to its pledge to work with China to build a new type of major-country relations between the two countries.
On Dec. 16, President Barack Obama's administration authorized a 1.83- billion-U.S.-dollar arms sale package to Taiwan, at a time when relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have reached an unprecedented level since 1949, following the historic cross-Strait leaders' meeting in Singapore last month.
Washington bases its arms sales to Taiwan on the fallacy of protecting the island from the so-called military threat from the mainland. But it deliberately ignores China's resolve to seek peaceful reunification as well as China's promise to never use force against Taiwan as long as the island does not announce independence or seek to split from the mainland.
Since its decision to pivot U.S. military and diplomatic resources to Asia, Washington has made quite a number of moves in the Asia-Pacific region. However, to the regret of many, a majority of these moves, under the pretext of promoting the stability and prosperity of the region, are actually aimed at sustaining U.S. supremacy.
China, which has played a responsible role on the world stage, has always maintained that the Pacific Ocean is big enough to accommodate both China and the United States.
Multipolarization is the trend of the times in international relations. Should Washington cling to its outdated notion of hegemonism and seek to undermine China's legitimate interests, it would not take long before Washington found itself trapped in a quagmire of its own making.
