Global Courant
“It should be clear that it would be unacceptable for China to establish an intelligence facility within 100 miles of Florida and the United States, in an area also populated with major military installations and extensive maritime traffic,” said Warner and Rubio.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio said in a tweet that he was “deeply disturbed” by the reports, adding, “If true, this would be another act of Chinese aggression .”
Setting up a listening post in Cub fits into China’s broader global strategy to secure ports and hubs at key maritime choke points around the world, giving it a platform “to gather real-time intelligence against the US military and US facilities.” in the region,” said Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank.
Chinese denials regarding the base “should not be taken at face value,” Singleton said. China initially described an outpost it built in Djibouti as a small logistics site, but it is now a sprawling base that can house thousands of Chinese marines, including huge paved underground facilities, he said.
As the government has made final preparations for Blinken’s trip in recent weeks, the Chinese and US militaries have had two close calls in the Western Pacific. A Chinese fighter jet flew dangerously close to a US military surveillance aircraft over the South China Sea on May 30, according to the Pentagon. Days later, a Chinese naval vessel came within 500 feet of a US destroyer in the Taiwan Strait, which slashed its bow. China rejected the Pentagon’s description and blamed the US for both incidents.
Speaking to reporters shortly after the incidents, Blinken said the near misses only underlined the importance of maintaining open lines of communication between the US and China.
“The most dangerous thing is not communicating and therefore getting a misunderstanding and miscommunication,” Blinken said. “As we’ve said repeatedly, while we have real competition with China, we’re also making sure it doesn’t turn into conflict.”
US allies in Asia and Europe, concerned about growing mistrust between the two superpowers, see Blinken’s planned visit as crucial to avoiding a trade war and an unintended crisis.
“All our allies are concerned that the relationship between the US and China continues to deteriorate,” said Bonnie Glaser, general manager of the Indo-Pacific program of the German think tank Marshall Fund. “They all want more stable relations between the United States and China.”
In March, South Korean representative Lee Jae-jung, who serves on the foreign affairs committee of the country’s National Assembly, said the “current state of Sino-US relations is a powder keg that I fear will time to explode”.
But critics and some Chinese hawks have questioned the administration’s approach, accusing the White House of working hard on it and being too eager to hold onto the prospect of possible high-level meetings with Chinese counterparts.
“Xi will only allow limited bilateral dialogue in niche areas vital to Beijing, while rejecting meaningful engagement in virtually anything of interest to Washington,” Singleton said.
After angry exchanges between Washington and Beijing during and after China’s balloon flight in February, the Biden administration has stopped talking about the airship publicly unless asked. The administration also has not released the results of an FBI-led investigation into the debris from the balloon, which was shot down on Feb. 4.
Chinese officials want to put the incident behind them and privately express their concern that the issue will come up again when the results of the FBI investigation are released. At the G7 summit in Japan in May, President Joe Biden dismissed the airship as a “silly balloon.”
