The United States is nearly completely reliant on China for its supply of lifesaving antibiotics.

“The crucial ingredients for nearly all antibiotics, steroids and many other lifesaving drugs are now made exclusively in China,” The New York Times reported in the 32nd paragraph of a Friday article entitled “Medicines made in India set off safety worries.”

Indeed, 2014 marks the tenth anniversary of Bristol-Myers Squibb — the last American plant that manufactured the key ingredients for penicillin and other drugs — shuttering it’s upstate New York factory.

“Like other manufacturing operations, drug plants have been moving to Asia because labor, construction, regulatory and environmental costs are lower there,” the Times reported in 2009.

As China has grown economically, it has also grown more bellicose.

An October Washington Free Beacon article highlighted the Chinese military’s “political warfare against the United States,” including “funding pro-China activities abroad, recruiting intelligence sources, spreading propaganda, engaging in media activities, funding front groups that promote Chinese strategy and goals and supporting perceived ‘friends’ of China.”

In November, China announced a new air zone over the South China Sea, requiring commercial airlines to identify themselves. An angry American response, including a nearly six-hour January meeting with Vice President Joe Biden, has failed to sway China to abandon the unilateral move.

In December, India and Japan began conducting joint naval exercises in response to China engaging the two countries in territorial-water disputes.

And speaking on tensions between China and Japan, including a dispute over islands, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told a February audience that “Asia is more in a position of 19th-century Europe, where military conflict is not ruled out. Between Japan and China, the issue for the rest of us is that neither side be tempted to rely on force to settle the issue.”

The comments played off of a speech by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who in late January warned that China and Japan should work to avoid repeating the mistakes of WWI.

The United States is a close ally to Japan, maintains military bases on the archipelago, and is pledged to defend the island nation if it is attacked. The U.S. and Japan broadened their security alliance in October to include stationing drones at American military bases in the country.

China’s economy is completely at the mercy of the ruling Communist Party in Beijing.

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