We don’t know if it merely a coincidence that a story has emerged discussing a Chinese mobilization in response to the ongoing territorial feud with Japan over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands (and the proximal massive gas field) the very week that China celebrates its new year (and days after news that a Chinese warship was very close to firing on a Japanese destroyer). We don’t know how much of the story is based in reality, and how much may be propaganda or furthering someone’s agenda. What we do know is that the source of the story: offshore-based, Falun Gong-affiliated NTDTV has historically been a credible source of information that the China communist party desperately tries to censor, such as breaking the news of the SARS epidemic in 2003 some three weeks before China publicly admitted it. Its motto is “to bring truthful and uncensored information into and out of China.” If that is indeed the case, and its story of major troop movements and mobilization of various types of military vehicles and artillery into the Fujian and Zhejian provinces, bordering the East China Sea and closest to the Diaoyu islands, is accurate, then hostilities between China and Japan may be about to take a major turn for the worse.
Fujian and Zhejian provinces highlighted below:
