News China May Have Undergone Some Kind of Coup

[brassmonkey]

An unusual and massive military exercise has been going on in China, and it seems to have had purposes that are more political than military.

?Firepower-2014″ kicked off on July 15, and 10 consecutive live ammunition drills across military regions were launched by the Chinese People? Liberation Army. In the meantime, the Navy and the Air Force also mobilized to participate in the exercises in the Beibu Gulf, Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea, and East China Sea.

With the participation of the three armed forces and the troops from the six military regions, the exercise was dubbed as an unprecedented ?Massive Military Exercise of the Three Armed Forces in Four Seas.?

In terms of the time period, it is also unprecedented, as it started in July and will continue until the end of September. In addition, part of the exercise, such as the drills in the waters of northeast Jiangsu Province, will continue until Nov. 20.

This series of military exercises began during a time of a relative relaxation of tensions in East Asia. Compared to some recent periods, the South China Sea and East China Sea were relatively calm. China?s drilling platform 981 retreated from off Vietnam?s shore. Since last December, the activities conducted by Chinese ships and military planes in the waters off Diaoyu Islands (called Senkaku Islands by Japan) were substantially reduced.

Following the two incidents in which Chinese fighter jets flew ?unusually close? to Japanese Self-Defense Force airplanes in May and June this year, the conflict between China and Japan has not escalated.

In late July, China invited Yasuo Fukuda, former Japanese prime minister and former president of the Liberal Democratic Party, to secretly visit China. Fukuda also met with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) head Xi Jinping to discuss how to improve Sino-Japanese relations, aiming to achieve the goal of holding a summit attended by the heads of China and Japan. (It is expected that they can meet as early as November this year when the APEC summit is held in Beijing.)

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