The Seto Submarine Scare, 2018

Background By the mid-2010s, the West began to realize their grand "China plan" was going to fail. The idea was that as China opened up, the market would become more free, and eventually, either internally or through the population, the government would also become more free. Instead, the government had grown stronger, and the West had allowed themselves to be played by the Chinese many times. In 2017, Western media began to become more and more critical of China. The West's antagonism towards China further grew when Donald Trump was elected as US President in 2016. In 2018, a trade war began when the US government passed tariffs on steel and aluminum. This primarily targeted the EU and China. In May 2018, Japan joined the US in putting tariffs on Chinese products, and the Abe government dropped any sort of reconcilatory tone it had towards China-Japan relations and began to criticize the Chinese government's malpractices towards it's people. Then in June 2016, the US put sanctions directly on China for "transfer of missile technology to North Korea, human rights abuses, aggression in the South China Sea, and sinister trade and diplomatic practices. Japan quickly followed, copying the US's decision, adding sanctions for "mistreatment of Japanese POWs after WWII, promoting anti-Japanese sentiment, and espionage". The EU, to embroiled in domestic crisises to give a response, did not join, and instead criticized the US and Japan for "hurting the globalized economy and promoting protectionism, as well as xenophobia towards the Chinese people". China on the other hand, had had enough. Anti-US and anti-Japanese protests broke out almost instantaneously as CCTV reported on the sanctions. Some Japanese cuisine restaurants were even torched. Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned the US and Japan it would not tolerate aggression against the Chinese people, and would eagerly respond the the "information war declaration" that they had delivered. NOTE- There is no automated ending, so