China’s naval provocations are getting too blatant to ignore

With the Biden administration rightly focused on the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, there is always the danger of a new overseas crisis emerging in a different part of the world — say, a rival power taking advantage of the distractions to flex its muscles or cause mischief.

That seems to be what’s happening now in the Pacific, with China as the key trouble maker.

And this may be too gentle a description for China’s dangerous actions in the disputed South China Sea. Better to say that Beijing appears to be engaged in deliberate acts of provocation, testing the United States and one of its chief regional allies, the Philippines.

The South China Sea has long been seen as the likeliest potential flash point between the United States and China — which is why we have argued on these pages the importance of resuming military-to-military contacts as quickly as possible, including a crisis communications hotline, to avoid accidents or unintended mishaps from escalating into all-out conflict.

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