Opinion | China's Challenge and US Response in the Indo-Pacific

In spite of the raging Covid-19 virus that has sent millions of Chinese to hospitals and killed thousands after the sudden U-turn in its quarantine policy, China has not taken its eyes off the prize: Taiwan and the South China Sea. During the last week of December 2022, 71 Chinese fighter jets and drones entered Taiwan's airspace, hitherto the largest and most aggressive incursions. During the same week, "a Chinese fighter jet flew dangerously close to a US Air Force aircraft that was conducting routine operations over the South China Sea," so close that it might have caused the planes…