In response to a comment explaining that neither ship was Chinese:
And this is why China needs to stop being gigantic bullies and jerks in those waters. It leads to tensions where even routine stupid collisions in very crowded waters are instantly assumed to be hostile actions. If this had been a Chinese ship that had been struck, the Chinese would have instantly reacted the same way and they would have started howling for blood before the facts were known.
Until China dials down the aggression, this area is a powder keg that they have created and sparks are flying every day. Today's mishap was another spark and everybody is lucky that the shooting didn't start. It's up to the Chinese to stop this and dial back the tension.
edit: wow, the China trolls are out for this comment! Sorry, kids. Have a nice afternoon.
At a certain point I've become a little impressed with how deeply they've managed to embed those in redditors. The ones that aren't outright bots are more worm than brain by now
Casually racist website. Just like after 9/11 when it was very OK to to be casually racist against anyone who was tan skinned or appeared to be of a middle eastern descent and muslim.
Just like back then, I predict in a few years we will get the rebound effect where we have episodes of a tv show or a movie where a Chinese character will appear to be the villain but actually help the white protagonist against the real villain (chinese state, or american defector to china). This is Hollywood's version of DEI.
As a would-be academic historian, it makes my blood boil when these ignorant chickenhawks bring up the Mandate of Heaven as though that concept still had any political currency in China whatsoever
I found this paper that a Redditor said was funded by Eglin which shows how to influence conversations online and control majority opinion, but keep in mind I haven't read the paper nor looked any deeper into the authors so take it with a grain of salt, unless you wanna look further.
Edit: apparently the official explanation is that Eglin is where military VPN traffic goes through, so everyone browsing Reddit on military networks does through Eglin. Kinda sus but seems reasonable imo
Not only that, but the vessel they struck was a large tanker or container vessel. Unless the fishermen were in a sailboat, the bigger boat had right of way.
American foreign policy - particularly americans talking about foreign policy - makes me want to die of dutch elm disease. As the late, great english-german disco author Georgio Moroderwell put it, "Imagine freedom fries. Forever"