this is just a face-saving gesture to the Chinese masses... obviously, Beijing has bitten more than it can chew...
had the Japanese been as defenseless as the Vietnamese at Johnson Reef, Beijing would have mowed them down with 40mm AA fire too... but Beijing perfectly knows that the Japanese Self-Defense Force would make mince-meat out of its budding navy and air force in a conventional war scenario...
which will leave it with just one viable military option... and that is to lob ballistic missiles across the East China Sea... which is a very expensive proposition if one is diplomatically-constrained in using only conventional warheads... and if those missiles have to run the gauntlet of US ABM technology...
Beijing is now back-pedalling... and remember what Sun Tzu said on a back-pedalling adversary: "when the enemy retreats, we pursue"...
the Philippines should grab this opportunity to quash in an international court all the historically fraudulent "Nine-Dash Line" claims of Beijing in the West Philippine Sea...
so that we can all live happily ever after...
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