Special to WorldTribune.com

Miles Yu, Inside China, Washington Times

For the first time in its 43-year history, the world’s largest multinational naval exercise, Rim of the Pacific exercise, or RIMPAC, hosted by the U.S. Navy on a biennial basis, has invited the Chinese navy to participate. …

Chinese state media is having a field day with propaganda promoting China’s participation as yet another great achievement of the Communist Party.

“The U.S. military first looked down upon the PLA; then it became vigilant against us; now it is forced to invite us to participate in regional drills,” the newspaper Global Times said. “This is all because our navy has become very strong, very quickly in recent years, which the U.S. military cannot afford to ignore.”

Vigilance against the United State also remains high. “By taking part in RIMPAC, the Chinese Navy enters the tiger’s lair,” screamed the headline on the party organ, Global Times. …

[O]ld habits die hard for China. It sees the RIMPAC initiation as yet another U.S. conspiracy against China’s rise.

The Global Times, a subsidiary of the Communist Party mouthpiece the People’s Daily, reasoned that in the 2012 iteration of RIMPAC the United States invited Russia, but not China, to the drills in order to isolate China and to “play Russia against China.” This time, however, Russia has run afoul of the United States over the Ukraine gambit, prompting the newspaper to state,“the US is trying to play the same old trick again [by inviting China, but not Russia] for the sole purpose of driving a wedge between China and Russia.”

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