1) Divert attentions away from PRC shooting of Vietnamese boats, repeated aggressive actions of cutting lines of foreign survey ships from India's to USA's, repeated unlawful arrest of Vietnamese and Filipinos fishing boats in their respective territories, repeated harassment of Vietnamese and Filipinos fishermen, and repeated acts of compromising Philippines territories in the Scarborough Reefs
2) Drive a wedge between a untied front of nations battling against PRC's expansionism and total control in SCS including Vietnam, Philippines, Taiwan, ASEAN countries and even India. This is the most crafty attack yet in Chinese deception: dividing your opponents. This is part of Sun Tzu's book that Chinese has learnt by heart
3) Boosting PRC's moral to replicate the same incident in the SCS right now. In fact this is part of their game plans when they sent 32 hundred-ton-"fishing boats" with an 4,000 tons tanker and a 1,500 tons escort ship to the Spratly Islands (Some "civilian shipping trip" that is!!
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With these three reasons, I hope Vietnamese, Filipinos, Taiwanese, and Indian posters understand this deception and have appropriate responses. Of course, false flaggers know who they are
So what is the effective counter-measure to that crafty trick from the PRC during similar incident? Vietnam seems to have made a good plan. For example, during the invasion of 32 'fishing ships," Vietnamese newspapers told a story of single brave Vietnam fishing boat facing the Chinese's army. This leads me to remember Tiananmen Square with that one brave man against a tank column. Vietnamese boat moved very close to PRC's convoy, dangerously diverted their course outside of Vietnam's territories. The single act also delayed their illegal fishing plan for a day. That's how you deal with cunning foes: using guts to contain them.