Obama was a fore in policy expert.
Via CNS News:
An administration decision to “disinvite” China from taking part in an international military exercise in the Pacific this summer comes two years after the Obama administration allowed it to participate, despite concerns about its aggressive behavior in the South China Sea.
Two years before that, the Obama administration invited China to take part in the biennial Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise for the first time since its 1971 inception – only to see Beijing also send a spy ship, uninvited, to the edge of the exercise to monitor it.
This year brings a different approach.
“As an initial response to China’s continued militarization of the South China Sea we have disinvited the PLA Navy from the 2018 Rim of the Pacific,” U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Christopher Logan said in a statement Wednesday.
He said the U.S. has “strong evidence” that China has deployed anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles as well as electronic jamming systems in a disputed region of the South China Sea where it has built artificial islands in support of its territorial claims.
Logan also cited China’s recent landing, for the first time, of nuclear-capable, long-range bombers on an island claimed by China, Vietnam and Taiwan, saying the move had “raised tensions.”
“We believe these recent deployments and the continued militarization of these features is a violation of the promise that [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping] made to the United States and the world not to militarize the Spratly Islands,” he added.
Xi gave that commitment alongside President Obama in the White House Rose Garden in September 2015, saying that the construction activities in the area in question “do not target or impact any country, and China does not intend to pursue militarization.”
Speaking to reporters alongside Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington on Wednesday, Chinese State Councilor Wang Yi called the RIMPAC decision “unconstructive” and voiced the hope that the U.S. would change its “negative mindset.”
Wang disputed charges that China was militarizing the region, claiming that was “is only building civilian and some necessary defense facilities on our own islands.”
He compared those steps to the U.S. military presence in Hawaii and Guam.[…]
In 2014 the Obama administration invited China to take part for the first time, and the PLA Navy sent a destroyer, a frigate, a supply vessel and a hospital ship. Controversially, it also deployed a surveillance vessel in the area.