The Financial Times reports that “Barack Obama has overseen an ‘unprecedented’ US military build-up in the Asia-Pacific region, according to Chinese government-backed analysts, who warn that a dramatic rise in US surveillance activities threatens stability in the region.”

“At the dawn of a new era in US foreign policy heralded by the election of Donald Trump as US president, analysts at the National Institute for South China Sea Studies said they saw the ‘rebalance’ to Asia launched by the US in 2009 as dangerously escalatory.”

“The US ‘is continuously increasing its military deployments and military base network in the Asia-Pacific region,’ Wu Shicun, the institute’s director, said at a press conference on Friday. ‘Currently the scale of US military deployments in the region is unprecedented.’”