China’s Global Times Friday editorially called the US bluff in the South China Sea, and said China would not back down, but would face the US threat head on.

The editorial in the official paper of the CPC said: “How the PLA deploys weapons and the defense levels should be determined by the threat level from external military forces. If the US military stages a real threat and a miitary clash is looming, the PLA may feel propelled to deploy more powerful weapons.”

On calling the bluff — not something commonly seen in the official press — the Global Times states: “China holds firm strategic initiatives in the South China Sea, and the US has no actual effective tools to contain China in the waters. It is best at rhetoric [rhetorical] offense, so we must reason with it head-on.”

As to the SAM’s in the Xisha (Paracel) Islands, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said on Thursday that “China has been deploying national defense facilities on Xisha Island for decades, it is nothing new.” On Friday Hong Lei was more direct: “Patrols by US military aircraft and navy vessels as well as its joint military drills with regional partners are behind escalated tensions in the South China Sea. That’s the real militarization of the South China Sea.”

Even the Wall Street Journal Friday acknowledged that “China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia have for decades stationed military hardware and personnel on the islands and reefs they control.”

The timing of the “revelation” of SAMs on China’s most developed island in the South China Sea, therefore, is self-evidently a fraud aimed at justifying Obama’s massive build up of forces around CHina.