Michael Yon: China Is ‘On the March’ Across the Pacific

Veteran war correspondent Michael Yon appeared on Breitbart News Daily with host Stephen K. Bannon on Friday morning to discuss the growing threat of Chinese ambitions in the South China Sea.

Yon, who lives in the Far East, said that China poses a “very serious” threat to American interests in the region. Having spent time in countries all around the Pacific Rim, he assured listeners that all of them are nervous about Chinese ascendancy, and American decline.

China is “clearly on the march,” said Yon, noting Chinese militarization of islands in the South China Sea, and it attempts to establish an air-defense zone, which the U.S. Navy regards as an affront to the freedom of navigation – which could pose a threat to a huge amount of vitally important commercial shipping.  

He said China is very aggressive at manufacturing historical precedent for Chinese “ownership” for real estate far beyond its borders.

“If we run by China’s rules, you know, if they can find some historical record that some Chinese guy sailed to an island 700 years ago, they’ll say ‘this island is ours,’” Yon warned. “They make up all sorts of things like this.  By their rules, technically the United States should own the entire Solar System, including the Moon, because we’re the first ones to plant flags on it.”

Yon said the “ascendancy of China is paramount” as a concern for the United States. He agreed “absolutely” with Bannon’s suggestion that Asian nations – from government officials, to business leaders, to the proverbial man on the street – view China as ascendant, and the U.S. in decline.  

While he does not personally agree with that assessment, Yon warned Americans not to underestimate the threat posed by China’s ambitions.

“China is on the march,” he warned.  “They bully everybody that they can bully, and the people they cannot bully, they try to buy.  They’re really infiltrating deeply into our universities in the United States, in the way that the Soviets did it in a previous generation.  They do it through various mechanisms that I could talk about for hours.”

Hear the interview: