The temperature rises a little more

A Chinese vessel attacked and sank a Vietnamese fishing boat, the Vietnam government said, raising tensions over a territorial dispute that saw clashes between the countries’ coast guard ships earlier this month.

“It sank,” ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh said of the Vietnamese vessel. “It was rammed by a Chinese boat.”

And that wasn't all:

The Chinese Defense Ministry said Sunday that the country's military scrambled fighter jets the previous day in response to Japanese Self-Defense Forces aircraft entering an air defense identification zone that China unilaterally established over the East China Sea last year.

According to the ministry announcement, an OP-3C surveillance plane of the Maritime Self-Defense Force and a YS-11EB of the Air Self-Defense Force entered China's ADIZ and "monitored and interfered with a joint military drill by the navies of China and Russia." In response, the Chinese fighters were scrambled and necessary identification and security measures were taken, it said.

It added that China protested the monitoring by the Japanese side, and requested it to cease "all activities of monitoring and obstructing" the exercise."

The conflict between China and it's neighbors is escalating, and it seems there is nothing being done to stop it.

The Chinese, apparently unaware of the source of their economic wealth, continue to bully and intimidate the countries that surround them, some of whom have self defense treaties with the US.

Ignore for a moment the rank foolishness of damaging their trade with the rest of the world, as well as the wisdom of manufacturing a circle of enemies, and ask exactly what the end game is here, and why they think that end game has even a shadow of a chance for success.

Is not their boldness due to the sudden and obvious evaporation of the Pax Americana?  Has that in turn not been the goal of this administration from it's very beginning?  Obama's obvious fecklessness and timidity is clearly encouraging adventurism from those that are so inclined.  Not only will Obama and his progressive allies transform America, they are also transforming the rest of the world, and in a way that will very likely result in violence.

If it is any consolation, the Chinese will likely suffer enormously from the conflict they seem to crave, as it will eliminate their ability to market their wares in many places around the world.  Certainly the multinationals that do business there must even now be planning what will be done should the idiots in Beijing start a hot war that separates them from their Chinese factories.  Whether the Chinese are considering what they will do when a hot war separates them from their markets remains to be seen.

The whole idea of the opening of China back in President Nixon's day was to make them a member of the international economy, and dependant on it for their prosperity, and thereby to make a war too expensive to contemplate.  Perhaps that plan is about to come apart.