Photo Gallery China Escalates Tensions
An aerial view of some of the islands that are part of the disputed cluster known as the Senkaku (in Japan) and Diaoyu (in China).
Map: A Powderkeg in the Far East.
The so-called "first island chain" has become a strategic obsession for the Chinese. China's navy celebrates every exercise in which its ships sail out into the Pacific -- as the aircraft carrier Liaoning did last week -- as the "destruction" of this chain.
China's first air craft carrier, Liaoning, which was commissioned in autumn 2012 and dispatched to the South China Sea.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is greeted with a military welcome outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing last month. China has been racing to establish its naval presence, just as the German Empire did over 100 years ago.
US fighter jets parked on the USS George Washington during a joint naval exercise with Japan in late November, 300 kilometers south of Okinawa. By the year 2020, the Pentagon intends to station roughly 60 percent of its naval military forces in the Pacific, including six aircraft carriers and numerous destroyers, cruisers and submarines.
US President Barack Obama challenged China's new air defense zone by sending two unarmed B-52 long-range bombers (shown here) into the East China Sea last week.
This week, US Vice President Joe Biden is set to visit Beijing for a planned meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping that has quickly taken on a new sense of urgency.
The Japanese airforce monitors the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the South China Sea in late 2011.
Japanese and Taiwanese coast guard ships make waves off the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea last year.
