China reacted more harshly than expected to the passage last week of the warship USS Lassen that skirted within 12 miles of one of Beijing’s newly-created and increasingly militarized South China Sea islands.
Chinese spokesmen issued sharp and threatening statements in response to the ship passage, unlike statement expressing less heated "serious concerns" of the impending passage of a ship through the sea in a US show of force designed to bolster regional allies and undermine Beijing’s questionable claim to most of the waters as its maritime domain.
The harshest statements came Oct. 29 when Adm. Wu Shengli, commander of the People’s Liberation Army Navy, warned US Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson in a teleconference of dire consequences from the Navy warship conducting a freedom of navigation operation three days earlier.
Read the entire article at the Asia Times.