"Little Japan" has become a buzzword in China in recent years, as growing nationalism rekindles old rivalries with its East Asian neighbor. Emboldened by the new economic and military power of "big China," the nationalists look down on the country whose troops briefly but brutally controlled most of lowland China before the end of World War II.
Just how big China will get is a concern for many nations, especially its neighbors.
On diplomatic visits, Chinese leaders discuss their country's "peaceful rise." They play down the nation's economic strength and regularly promise to increase imports from Southeast Asian countries, trying to sell a "win-win" picture of China's rapid inroads into global trade.
China's ruling Communist Party also points to tens of millions of Chinese people who still live in poverty, and highlights the US as the world's only superpower.
"Actually, it is now the US that plays a dominant role in this (Asia-Pacific) region," said Zhang Xiaoming (張小明), an international relations professor at Beijing University.
"The issue of China's threat is not so serious in the surrounding countries," Zhang said.
But many people in Japan and other Asian nations remain worried by China's economic and military might. Indonesia, for example, has an "undercurrent of uneasiness" about China, said Salim Said, an Indonesian independent political analyst,
Despite US President George W. Bush's unpopularity in the country, "Indonesians basically prefer good relations with America versus China," Salim said. "They're always suspicious that China has an idea of becoming lord of this part of the world... That kind of feeling is always below the surface."
At the APEC leaders' summit in Busan this week, China's growing diplomatic standing is likely to be more prominent than its economic and military rise.
President Hu Jintao (
"He will make proposals about prevention and control of infectious diseases and introduce China's future economic development plan," Li said.
Like Hu, Bush has also pledged to take the initiative in Busan on measures to fight avian influenza. Hu's raising of the issue "shows China is active in handling non-traditional security issues in a multilateral way," Zhang said.
China's diplomacy has been bolstered by keeping the momentum in protracted talks over North Korea's nuclear program, balancing the tough demands of North Korea and the US, and persuading the other five parties to agree to a joint statement of principles.
"It shows that China is a responsible country, and China is much more active in its diplomacy than in the past," Zhang said.
"The six-party talks are a typical example. In the past, China was reluctant to be a host country for this kind of multilateral meeting, it only participated passively," Zhang added.
Many diplomats in neighboring countries feel they must actively court a China that can only become more powerful in the future.
"The whole world is engaging with China in a more aggressive manner, as we are doing right now -- politically and militarily," said a senior Philippine diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Amid this growing diplomatic profile, Hu will make a state visit to South Korea the day before the leaders' summit. It is not clear if he will meet Bush in Busan. Any such meeting is likely to be brief, and mainly for show, since Bush will meet Hu in Beijing during a high-profile visit to China immediately after the APEC summit.
Another notable feature of the APEC summit is likely to be China's lack of diplomatic activity with Japan. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi stoked the ire of China and South Korea with another visit to the controversial Yasukuni war shrine last month.
Koizumi later said he hoped the issue of the shrine visits could be solved through dialogue with China, and that he hoped to meet Hu at the APEC summit. But Chinese analysts believe Hu will again snub Koizumi.
"In East Asia, Japan (not China) is the subject of much concern," said Gong Zhankai (
Gong said a meeting between Hu and Koizumi in Busan was "almost impossible."
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
RSS