John Pilger’s The coming war on China

IT’S no secret that Beijing has been building up its military might in the South China Sea.

But there’s another superpower making an even bigger play to stay top dog and many of us wouldn’t event realize. The United States has surrounded China with 400 military bases in an almost perfect “noose”.

In a new documentary set to air on Sunday night, The Coming war on China, award-winning journalist and filmmaker John Pilger challenges the notion of the world’s newest, biggest trading nation as an enemy.  He also reveals the build-up to war taking place right on Beijing’s doorstep.

Filmed over two years in the Marshall Islands, Japan, Korea, China and the US, Pilger highlights America’s secret history in the region.

The eye-opening documentary reveals some surprising findings including that the people of the Marshall Islands were used as nuclear guinea pigs under the top secret “Project 4.1”.

Pilger also travels to Japan and Korea where he speaks to and observes people resisting the US expansion.

He visits the Japanese island of Okinawa where 32 US bases are located and speaks to those who are challenging the world’s biggest military power.

On the Korean island of Jeju, a world heritage site, he witnesses farmers, villagers, priests and supporters who block gates to a base only to be removed every day.

In an interview with news.com.au ahead of the film going to air, Pilger said he wanted to “help people make sense of a critical subject that is seldom more than a series of sound-bites.”

“I say critical, because a strange and dangerous atmosphere currently separates the world’s greatest military power, the United States, and a country that will almost certainly become the world’s greatest economic power, China,” he said.

“In the past few years, the provocations, threats, contradictions and confusion have caused the kind of mistrust that make war by misunderstanding or by mistake or accident a real possibility. And both the US and China are nuclear-armed.”

Pilger also raises questions over whether it’s Beijing we should really be worried about.

“China is surrounded by 400 US military bases in what one strategist describes as a ‘noose’,” he said.

“Many of these bases are on China’s doorstep, armed with missiles, naval battle groups, nuclear bombers, drones. US naval warships patrol just outside Chinese waters.”

While the US has almost 1000 foreign bases, China has just one which Pilger said was smaller and did not threaten California.

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