China Hones Wartime Strategy Targeting US Forces [Video]

The Chinese navy and Coast Guard were reportedly conducted a maritime blockade drill in a strategic waterway near a Japanese island, where the United States stationed its forces.

Why It Matters

The Japanese newspaper The Yomiuri Shimbun said the drill was held in the Miyako Strait. It lies between two of the southwestern islands in Japan—Miyako and Okinawa—while serving as the maritime boundary of the Philippine Sea and the East China Sea.

The U.S. military deployed 54,000 personnel in Japan pursuant to the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security of 1960. Okinawa, a Japanese prefecture that covers two-thirds of the Southwest Islands, hosts more than half the U.S. forces in the country.

Both the waterway and the Southwest Islands form part of a north-south blockade known as the first island chain, a U.S. defense concept that seeks to leverage the territories of Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines to contain the Chinese military in the Pacific …