In 2004, Premier Wen Jiabao said that China’s rise “will not come at the cost of any other country, will not stand in the way of any other country, nor pose a threat to any other country”. The broad Pacific Ocean is vast enough to embrace both China and the United States”, said Chinese President Xi Jinping while meeting US Secretary of State John Kerry in Beijing in May 2015. Speaking alongside US President Barack Obama in the White House Rose Garden in September 2015, the Chinese President Xi Jinping said,“Relevant construction activity that China is undertaking in the Nansha Islands does not target or impact any country and there is no intention to militarise,” using the Chinese name for the disputed Spratly archipelago. But the exact opposite has happened. All these assertions and assurances today appear to have been either forgotten or have become redundant in the Chinese scheme of things. China’s ‘peaceful rise’ now seems out of the question. It raises a serious doubt; can China be trusted?