China has an advantage over the US Navy that could mean a 'decisive' defeat for US warships in a fig

[soryang]

3. Gunboat diplomacy does matter

That's the message the US and its allies send in the far east every day. Just as Japan saw that it had to mimic western navies that imposed their will on the far east in the 19th Century, China is doing the same now in the 21st Century. Japan (Abe's LDP) still wants to break out of the post WWII constitutional restrictions from building offensive naval forces for power projection purposes. It is evident that the US and UK are okay with this.

The Chinese got the message and are now building the armed forces to break out, if the need arises, from the island cordon keeping them from the open Pacific and from access to the Indian ocean to protect their sea lines of communication.