This is bullying

The Chinese have been doing this to Japan, and this to Taiwan. There have been rumblings of the PRC building up their amphibious capability to secure either Taiwan or the shipping lanes passing through Indonesia. They even played this game with the United States during the spring of 2001.

Just about the only folks in East Asia they haven't tried to push around are the North Koreans.

As the Chinese people grow more restless under the incongruity of a communist government presiding over a growing, free market economy; the more the government there relies on the public relations boost they get internally by treating their neighbors as enemies, and the more tempted they become to use war as a means of supercharging their economy.

It's a recipe for disaster.