By Zachary Keck
In recent months, China has adopted an increasingly aggressive posture across the Asia-Pacific region – from provoking fights with neighbours in the South China Sea, to introducing provocative new military systems, to holding joint military exercises with Pakistan on India’s border.
Why now? The more assertive Chinese posture is likely the product of both a permissive regional environment that presents Beijing with the opportunity to assert itself, and its own domestic turmoil, which provides Chinese policymakers a reason to foment distracting confrontation abroad.
Read the full story at The Diplomat