IN COMMUNIST CHINA’S FACE: India’s Malabar 2020 naval exercise is another indication the Trump Administration’s decision to challenge China economically and diplomatically strengthened regional resistance to China. My latest Creators Syndicate column.

…the Trump administration’s American domestic economic revival and its hard-nosed trade agreements with China demonstrated that the U.S. could and would counter China’s economic hegemony. Washington used legal, financial and diplomatic instruments to penalize Chinese intellectual-property theft. It also targeted Chinese spying, which penalized lucrative Chinese companies like Huawei linked to espionage.

See another recent essay for more on countering Huawei and China’s bid for global information dominance.

VERY RELATED: An Indian Navy destroyer participating in Malabar 2020 photographed from the USS John S. McCain.

A DIPLOMATIC AND ECONOMIC EXAMPLE: The Philippines defies The Dragon in the South China Sea.

The government has decided to defy Chinese threats and proceed with oil exploration off Reed Bank, which is 148 kilometers west of the Philippines (Palawan Island) and well within the Philippines’s EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone) that extends 360 kilometers from the coast. Although the EEZ is recognized by international law, and a treaty that China signed and uses to defend waters off its own coast, China says that does not apply here because all the islets in the South China Sea belong to China and there is no room for negotiation on that point. Most countries in the region, except Japan, which would rather not dwell on this, note that this was how Japan behaved before World War II.

I suggest you read it.