It carries its own paranoia because of the United States’ increasing freedom of navigation operations (Fonops) in the South China Sea and its effort to build a coalition of friendly allies around China, beginning from South Korea and Japan in the northeast, Taiwan and the Philippines and Australia on its eastern side, and Vietnam, Singapore and India to its south. The United States also has military bases in the former Soviet Republics in central Asia as well as in the Middle East, almost encircling China.