[rosser]

In theory, China could build islands across the pacific and setup bases and missiles along the US west coast.

The average depth of the Pacific Ocean is over 14,000 ft (almost exactly 4.3 km).

That's a lot of dredging.

[qiqing]

But the U.S. builds some bases pretty close to China's coasts... To be fair, some of those island bases in Asia are used for the CIA torture program, so its purported purpose is probably not aggression towards China.