The threat of China is becoming big news, the media is beating the drums of war as the world is being primed to regard China as a new enemy. China is building airstrips in the South China Sea on disputed islands condemned by an international tribunal, this is now a flashpoint for war between China and America. What is not making the news though is that China itself is under threat from American bases which have been strategically positioned to form a noose encircling China with missiles, bombers, and warships all the way from Australia through the Pacific, to Asia and beyond.

The Coming War on China is a film brought to you by award-winning journalist John Pilger. In it, Pilger sets out to reveal what the news doesn’t want you to hear and that is that the world’s greatest military power, the United States, and the world’s second economic power, China, both nuclear-armed, may well be on the road to war. As the world’s economic power moves rapidly towards Asia the response of the United States is to deploy the majority of its naval forces to Asia and the Pacific, this massive military build-up is known in Washinton as the ‘pivot to Asia’ and China is very much the target.

This policy was put in place by President Obama but has been taken up by his successor Donald Trump, who during his election campaign said “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country and that’s what they’re doing”. This great power game of the 21st Century is called perpetual war, for America’s unchallenged arms industry the annual prize is huge profits from almost 600 billion dollars of military spending.

Filmed on five possible front-lines across Asia and the Pacific over the course of a two year period, this story is told in chapters that connect a secret and ‘forgotten’ past to the rapacious actions of great power today and to a resistance, of which little is known in the West.

Directed by: John Pilger