China challenges US in its backyard

It is the near future, and China prepares to strike back after being attacked, loosing off ballistic missiles to take out an aircraft carrier and destroying an airfield as a fighter jet takes off.

The enemy is not named in the animation, released late last month by Chinese internet giant Tencent, but the ship looks a lot like a US Nimitz-class carrier, while the destroyed fighter is clearly a Lockheed Martin Corp F-22.

It may be fantasy, but the clip - viewed more than 60 million times so far - reflects a mood of rising nationalism and confidence among the Chinese public and military.

An assertive China under President Xi Jinping now believes its military has the technology to at the very least make the United States think twice before undertaking any military adventures in what China sees as its backyard.

"Can the United States be certain of getting the upper hand in the event of a showdown with China?" retired Major-General Luo Yuan, now a widely followed military commentator, wrote in June. "China is preparing every day to win a modern war."

Xi visits the United States at end of this month. Analysts see three potential arenas for such a showdown - the South China Sea, where China has a series of overlapping territorial disputes with its neighbors, the East China Sea, where remote islets are a source of friction between Beijing and US ally Japan, and any conflict over self-ruled Taiwan.

China's ostentatious display of some of its latest military hardware at a parade in Beijing last week to mark the end of World War Two underlined its growing might.

An unpublished Taiwan Defense Ministry report, seen by Reuters, warned that China's upgraded H-6 bomber, when equipped with anti-ship missiles, would enable China to project power even deep into the Indian Ocean.

The same aircraft type appears in the Tencent animation, firing off missiles that end up taking out the carrier.

"The message China is giving these days is 'we're here and you'd better get used to it'," said one senior Beijing-based Asian diplomat. "The aim is to push the Americans as far away as possible. There can only be one big brother in this region."