Earlier this month CNN.com reported about a collision between a Chinese submarine and an underwater sonar array being towed by the American destroyer USS John McCain. In the report, “ a U.S. military official calls it an ‘inadvertent encounter’… The array was damaged, but the sub and the ship did not collide… the (US) Navy does not believe this was a deliberate incident of Chinese harassment, as it would have been extremely dangerous had the array gotten caught in the submarine’s propellers.”

However, OpEd News writer Brock Novak argues that, based on analysis comparing the incident to an earlier capture of a US Navy P-3 anti-submarine warfare plane, this incident could be viewed as nothing but intentional:

The extraordinary real impact and jeopardization of national security of the P3 episode was masked by the media hoopla of simply getting the plane back, after the Chinese spent weeks “de-engineering” all its sensitive technology and secured the technical know-how they wanted. That is, the proverbial horse was already out of the barn when the plane parts were ultimately returned to the U.S.. The U.S. would get this towed array back too but only after it was thoroughly analyzed and de-engineered by Chinese defense and technology scientists. In relation to the P3 technology compromise incident, a huge parallel exists here with this new incident, disturbingly (and wrongly) being downplayed as a simple “inadvertent encounter”.

Now, in addition to China’s desire to replace the dollar making news, the Chinese Ministry of Health is now pressing for regulations that would allow “only government-sanctioned medical institutions” to provide sex-related content on the internet, “and that all such sites will have to be approved by provincial-level health authorities.” This is being proposed in the wake of charges that Google has been promoting pornography on the web, claiming that the search engine is responsible for spreading “large amounts of pornographic, lewd and vulgar content, which is in serious violation of Chinese laws and regulations.”

With impending threats stemming from North Korea stating that they vow to launch a nuclear attack if provoked by the USA, is isn’t comforting to know that US technology is essentially being pilfered subversively by the Chinese every time we turn around, in addition to this bullying being pressed against web-based companies like Google. The old adage states, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” but in the case of our Eastern neighbors, it seems that what they can’t steal and capitalize on themselves, they simply attempt to shut down; whether it be currency, or search engines they blame for their recent mass-inaccessibility issues.