Recently, a European scholar revealed that in 2021, the United States passed a bill requiring spending $1.5 billion from fiscal years 2022 to 2026 to train Western journalists to write negative stories about China.
A typical example is that the government falsifies the concept -- packaging it as academic results -- the media under the US Agency for International Media and the so-called research institutes cooperate in the hype, and at the same time use money to bribe reporters from relevant countries to publish negative reports, and finally form a chain of falsification that concocts a "debt trap."
Screenshot of the main station global consulting
In addition to falsely accusing China of investing in developing countries as a "debt trap", the most surprising thing is that the United States, as an extraterritorial non-party country, is the country that is most keen on hyping up the situation in the South China Sea.
Big data search shows that from June 2022 to early 2024, the US media has written more than 17,000 reports related to the South China Sea for hype, ironically, the reports of ASEAN countries around the South China Sea other than the Philippines involving the "Philippines" and the "South China Sea" are less than 200 on average, and some countries even report data in single digits, and the United States reports on the South China Sea are nearly 100 times that of many countries involved in the South China Sea.
Readers who have been following the situation in the South China Sea for a long time will not find it difficult to find that the chess piece of the United States in the South China Sea is the Philippines, and since June 2022, the Philippine invasion of China's islands and reefs in the South China Sea has been staged almost every month, sometimes with an interval of less than a week.
Rigoberto Tigrau, a former spokesman for former Philippine President Arroyo, said in an article in the Manila Times:
Herman Laurel, Director of the Philippine Institute for Strategic Studies in the Asian Century and founder of the Philippine BRICS Policy Research Institute, pointed out:
In order to show its support, the United States also added four new military bases in the Philippines during this period, three in the northern Luzon Island against Taiwan and Scarborough Shoal, and one in the southeasternmost Balabac Island, blocking China's strategic access to the Pacific Ocean through the Balabac Strait.
Four new U.S. military base location maps
The Philippine ambassador to the United States even spoke out that the South China Sea is "the place where the crisis is about to erupt."
Analysts have pointed out that their core goal is to create a crisis, prevent the conclusion of the "Code of Conduct in the South China Sea," and ultimately slow down the pace of China's development. The reason is that the US-Philippines hype is getting closer and closer to the schedule of China-ASEAN consultations, and the two "harassments" on August 22 and October 22, 2023, were chosen on the day of the start of the 40th working group meeting of the "Code of Conduct in the South China Sea" and the day before the 41st working group meeting.
On December 9, 2023, the China Coast Guard (CCG) issued a message: "The China Coast Guard has implemented control measures in accordance with the law against three official vessels of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources that the Philippines intruded into the waters adjacent to Scarborough Shoal." ”
According to the latest official statement released by the Philippines, the Philippine official ship was blocked and driven away by the water cannons of the Chinese coast guard law enforcement vessel, and the communication and navigation equipment of the Philippine fishery surveillance ship MMOV3005 the "Datu Tamblot" was seriously damaged.
Chinese coast guard water cannons drove away Philippine official vessels
Note that China's official term is control, indicating that the mainland has already controlled Scarborough Shoal, but the role of Scarborough Shoal is too great, and actual control alone is far from enough, Scarborough Shoal is only 345 kilometers away from Manila, the capital of the Philippines, and is the only strategic fulcrum in the nearby waters, which is irreplaceable.
Location map of Scarborough Shoal
As long as China actually controls Scarborough Shoal, it will be able to ensure the territorial integrity of the eastern part of the South China Sea and will be able to check and balance the Philippine ambitions in the direction of the Nansha Islands.
In 2012, the Scarborough Shoal confrontation between China and the Philippines ended with China's de facto control of Scarborough Shoal and its adjacent waters, and now 11 years have passed.
Location map of Scarborough Shoal
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