An expert on China and its government warns that the communist nation has been aggressively claiming territory in the South China Sea. The United States, meanwhile, has responded weakly.
Gordon Chang, an attorney and author, says China has been claiming disputed islands in the area for over a year, which would shut the waters to international commerce.
Why? Because China's political structure is "brittle" and its economy is "faltering," Chang claims.
"And this belligerence, I think, is the result of internal weakness," Chang says. "China right now is a threat to the international community and to the United States not because it is strong, but because it is weak."
Chang authored the book The Coming Collapse of China. The theory that the growing country is actually at risk of ruin is a running theme at Chang's self-named website. He lived and worked in China, and now writes and speaks about the country to a worldwide audience.
Recently the New York Times reported that the Beijing regime has privately circulated an official map to foreign diplomats that shows for the first time that 80 percent of the South China Sea is China's.
Therefore Beijing now takes the position that the ships and planes of other countries will have to get its permission to enter the area, which has long been considered international water and airspace.
More than half of the world's annual merchant tonnage passes through the South China Sea.
But Chang says, unfortunately, U.S. response to the Chinese threat has been feeble. "This is bipartisan failure in Washington, both Republicans and Democrats," he says. "So when it comes to China, which I believe is the greatest threat to American security, we have inadequate policies."
Chang says he was not encouraged by this past weekend's meeting between President Obama and China's new leader, President Xi Jinping.-One News Now
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