When he was in The US last week, Chinese President Xi Jing Ping cited an Ancient Greek historian to argue that conflict with the United States is not inevitable - at the same time, China completed an air field on its new headquarters in the South China Sea. More from Neal Conan in the Pacific News Minute.
In a speech in Seattle - Xi Jing Ping declared, "There is no such thing, as the so called Thucydides trap." He referred to the Greek historian's observation that a rising power inevitably comes into conflict with an established power. He described upstart Athens and old line Sparta in his classic history of the Peloponnesian War in the 5th century BC. More recent historians cited Imperial Germany's challenge to Britain. Though each other's largest trading partners, they ended up in the bloody trenches of the First World War.
Now, the United States is the status quo superpower and China, the up and comer is pushing to establish its own sphere of dominance in the Western Pacific. Even as President Xi visited the White House, Janes Defense Weekly cited new satellite images that show the completion of a ten thousand foot runway on Fiery Cross Reef - China's key position in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.
Also last week, US Pacific commander Admiral Harry Harris told Congress that Chinese missiles and fighter planes on Fiery Cross Reef and other islands created by Chinese engineers would create, “a mechanism in which China would have de facto control of the South China Sea in any scenario short of war." At the same hearing, Assistant Secretary of Defense David Shear declared, "the Chinese have not yet placed advanced weapons on these features and we're going to do everything we can to ensure that they don't."