Olympic War Part 1: BEFORE THE FLAME (Pr.891 Carrier Showcase)

Date - 3 August 2008, 03:00 Beijing Time Location - Spratly Islands, South China Sea Player - People Liberation Army: Pr. 891 Carrier Group & Joint Forces Time to the Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony - 5 Days, 17 Hours This is another world's year 2008. In 1989, Beijing and Moscow took paths different from those recorded in our history. The Soviet Union did not collapse. After years of political and economic crisis, it emerged as a Russian-dominated union state—economically troubled, yet still possessing formidable military power and global influence. The world celebrated the end of the Iron Curtain, but the alliances, bases and front lines left behind by the Cold War never truly disappeared. In this altered timeline, the Iron Curtain’s continued existence also gave China and the United States common interests throughout the 1990s. Washington regarded Beijing as both an important counterweight to Soviet and a major participant in economic globalization. China, in turn, continued to receive important arms sales and military technology from Western. The two countries were never formal allies, but their relationship became considerably closer than it did in our history. That understanding collapsed after the 2001 Hainan Island incident. An accident that might once have been resolved through diplomacy escalated into several days of aerial and naval confrontation, followed by limited exchanges of fire. Washington was forced to recognize that fashionable talk of a Sino-American “partnership,” together with years of ideological engagement, had not produced a China willing to stand fully alongside the United States or submit to its strategic designs. Beijing likewise concluded that America’s policy of engagement had always carried explicit geopolitical conditions. Economic ties remained extensive, but relations in the Western Pacific increasingly became a mixture of cooperation, competition and mutual containment. The Soviet Union’s survival had also transformed the strategi