China's New Law

     This past week China passed a law allowing their coastguard to attack foreign ships that are in their waters:

China has risked stoking tensions with its neighbours after it passed a law that for the first time explicitly allows its coastguards to fire on foreign vessels and demolish structures built in disputed waters.

The coastguard law, passed on Friday by China’s top legislative body, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, came two years after China’s military assumed control of the previously civilian maritime body in 2018.

The law empowers the coastguard to use “all necessary means” to deter threats posed by foreign vessels in waters “under China’s jurisdiction”. It will also allow the coastguards to launch pre-emptive strikes without prior warning if commanders deem it necessary.

It is unclear whether the law will be applied to all waters claimed by Beijing, which has a number of competing claims with its neighbours in the East and South China Seas

    This move could be a power play to coerce nations nearby to give up the disputed waters in exchange for protection. After all, America is falling from grace and China is on the rise. Despite this America just sent the U.S.S Theodore Roosevelt to the South China sea:

The strategic South China Sea, through which trillions of dollars in trade flows each year, has long been a focus of contention between Beijing and Washington, with China particularly angered by U.S. military activity there.

The U.S. carrier group led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt and accompanied by three warships, entered the waterway on Saturday to promote “freedom of the seas”, the U.S. military said, just days after Joe Biden became U.S. president..

“The United States frequently sends aircraft and vessels into the South China Sea to flex its muscles,” the foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, told reporters, responding to the U.S. mission.

    Now, this isn't the first time we have seen America flex its muscles in the South China Sea. Trump's administration did this a time or two. What is different this time, is China's new law.  However, I don't see a direct war with China on the horizon. China is currently in a military standoff with India over a border dispute, and America is gearing up for more war in the middle east. I think America's recent actions in the South China Sea have a new meaning: Show strength temporaily then gradually allow China to replace our presences in Asia.