If your news or twitter feed coughs up China-related stuff, you might have seen this from Reuters on May 25:
Reuters (and subsequently the Western media en masse) was making hay with a laboriously parsed op-ed in China’s Global Times that purported to lay out the PRC bottom line– that the PRC was totally committed to the island expansion program and there would be trouble, localized but uglier than we’ve been used to, if the United States was totally committed to stopping it.
Mission unaccomplished on the “misunderstanding” [propaganda] end at least, as we shall see.
The English language version of the GT op-ed stated:
For China, one bottom line is that the reclamation of these islands must be finished no matter what. If the US sets its bottom line on the condition that China must stop its construction work, then military confrontation will start sooner or later.
For understandable reasons, Reuters decided to run with the more detailed and somewhat more menacing Chinese language version:
如果美国的底线就是中国必须停工，那么中美南海一战将无可避免而且冲突的烈度会高于人们通常理解的“摩擦
If the US bottom line is that China must stop construction, then a clash between US & PRC is unavoidable and the degree of severity of the conflict will be higher than what people usually understand as “friction”.
A 100% accurate, boring, and convoluted rendering of this paragraph as a headline might be PRC state-affiliated newspaper warns clashes ‘more than friction’ unavoidable if US insists PRC back down on island construction.
Instead, Reuters reduced and pureed these lumpy sentiments into the easy-to-digest China state paper warns of war over South China Sea unless U.S. backs down
An outlet that takes the Reuter feed improved it to War inevitable unless the US backs down – China state media
Not to be outdone, Quartz went with China Warns of ‘Inevitable’ War with US Over South China Sea
Huffington Post:
China-US War ‘Inevitable’, According to State-Run Newspaper
And a little further down the food chain:
China Warns of World War 3 Unless the US Backs Down on South China Sea
Maybe chalk up the “inevitable war” furor to the desperate quest for click-bait by Western outlets who know on what side their access, advertising, and readership bread is buttered (hint: it’s not the China side, at least not…mostly…yet).
This is excerpted from Peter Lee’s astute article Did “China” Say “War” With the United States is “Inevitable”?
Warewhulf 