This seems pretty benign militaries are always testing each others borders with "oops i got lost" or "look at me not touching not touching" missions. It's a good way to gauge the capability and readiness of a nations forces. Taiwan just showed its hand, and it is a weak one.

"and it is a weak one."

Which is the actual problem. Trump has made it clear he will back Taiwan, and then there is the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty.

After Trump's comments on China, China may very well see the weakness of Taiwan as a win-win. It will allow them to take back territory they claim is theirs, lock in even more of the $5 billion of pacific trade, AND make Trump look like an ass all in one go.

2017, lets have WWIII. Why not?

Don't encourage it.

I think when this century comes to a close WWIII started in 2001 when some towers fell.

I'm just hope it doesn't take til 2020 to get clear vision and stop the war.

Ahh.... So who do you think this world war should be fought against?

Whoever has the greatest supply of sticks and stones, so we're at an advantage for World War IV.

So, Greece, if I remember correctly.

Just wondering how if 9/11 set this process in motion who would be the...:"enemy"

Satans Army of muslims, of course.

I consider the process the movement from Afghanistan to Iraq with exercises/operations all around the region (where was Bin Laden killed?).

Now I'm just wondering if they are aiming north for Greece and all their Olive Oil or are they going to go south to Egypt for a for a nice cruise down deNile.

Oh and at least Hitler made some of his "enemies" wear arm bands.

And he gave anyway free tattoos. /Troll

Terror. Terror was the enemy.

It was Terror versus Freedom.

Or possibly the other way around.

Trump's term will end in a bunker with his dog, new wife, a pistol, and cyanide.

Is this week old news? Or future news?

This was the time stamp for the article
"January 10, 2017 9:55 PM".

Yet it starts on Wednesday.

And hey if it was the kick off day for WWIII battle plan "Round Eye Revenge" those planes wouldn't be on deck.

It's almost Thursday in Taiwan.

You know none of these people have"round eyes". Maybe we could have Trump call em again....Did anybody think China was just going to let this go? They are there as not so subtle reminder of who's in charge.

The question is: Will China start WWIII to save face or will Trump start it to stop his piss-tape from being made public?

No one wants WW3 but Russia and China would have to be stupid to pass up probing Trump for weakness/response/indifference.

You're not wrong, but doing so to someone as prone to over-reaction as he could be disastrous for all parties.

Seems like a reasonable assessment.
But if by chance China really did want to invade Taiwan with minimal US response, the closing days of the Obama administration or especially the opening days of the Trump administration might be the ideal opportunity to do so.

China would have a lot to lose if it invades. China tends to think in a more multi-generational level (usually).

Frankly China using military power to invade opens a whole other can of worms and china has a LOT more to lose via military invasion than gain.

The military build up is probably compatible to the Japanese meiji era and is more useful for negotiations and not being pushed around (and intimidating/enveloping smaller countries) and doing things like securing fishing and oil resources by playing the "this mound of rocks is chinese so we get everything within 100 miles of this zone".

Ultimately it probably has more to do with keeping fuel and seafood prices low than it is about invading Taiwan- but there are probably elements in China that want to do that, so probably can't rule it out entirely- but it would give Japan an wonderful excuse to "re-militarize" and probably push S.Korea/Japan/others into a weird alliance instead of playing them off each other.

My Chinese friends make an okay point- China is really too busy trying to keep itself from falling apart to really be doing any invading. In that light, starting a war of any kind would be disastrous because if China was invaded, there would probably be a ton of breakaway providences, and they aren't going to risk that for a short term taiwan grab when they can likely co-opt taiwan economically and culturally in the long term (I forgot which political party in taiwan is the chinese friendly one, green or blue. Are those the colors?)

But I imagine there's great value in testing Trump's reaction and American policy during a transitional phase.

edit: And if you want to play fast-and-loose... the issue with taiwan is that it has a semi-legit claim of governorship over china ("we were the original pre wwII government of china") and if taiwan was invaded, other governments could probably use that invasion as a green light to invade china and use the taiwanese govenment as a kind of puppet government to split china. Given that China saw what happened to the USSR, I'm pretty sure China isn't too keen on offensive military action when they could probablt successfully assimilate taiwan in the future via economics, long term trade, and politics.