China should 'reconsider' who owns Okinawa: state media

[Hack-Hook]

The Chinese are simply too nice. The Chinese should learn from the US on Hawaii. The Chinese should sent lots of merchants to do business there, stay there, build families where and then request a referendum.

This is how Hawaii became part of USA. WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

Referendum , which one ? Hawaii was no referendum it was a coupe.

 

[IndoUS]

The Chinese are simply too nice. The Chinese should learn from the US on Hawaii. The Chinese should sent lots of merchants to do business there, stay there, build families where and then request a referendum.

This is how Hawaii became part of USA. WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

Hawaii was taken over in a coup by the help of the merchants. There was no referendum. The queen was forced to give up her land to the merchants and soldiers which in turn was given to the US.

 

[Okemos]

The Chinese are simply too nice. The Chinese should learn from the US on Hawaii. The Chinese should sent lots of merchants to do business there, stay there, build families where and then request a referendum.

This is how Hawaii became part of USA. WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

Before imperialism taught it hard lessen, China was always an inward-looking country. The emperors never liked to move its people abroad. That's why you see so many times sea trades were banned. You know ancient China has this "civilized me and barbarian outsider," also "if a civilized Chinese moves to barbarian land, he becomes barbarian. If a barbarian moves to China, he becomes Chinese."

 

[JSCh]

Yes, he had a deed to make China as a whole again. But a very bad statesman.

I don't think China in late '70 was modernized. They even leave behind again. Mao and communism are part of ugly Chinese history and mistake that we had done. There's nothing to be proud off with the communist nor nasionalist.

We can modernized while being traditional at the same time. It was a big mistake we had done to defamed and demonized Chinese civilization.

You forget the most important gift that Mao brought to China, national security.

In the hundred year before Mao took over, China has signed over 1000 unequal treaties that has cede territory, paid over astronomical amount of reparations, concession of administrative rights in lease territories, tolerating station of foreign military and police troop in China territory, concession of tariffs, legal rights and sphere of influence to large powerful and tiny countries that China has not even heard of alike. China was humiliated over and over again.

It was Mao that galvanized the Chinese people to stand up and defend China. It was Mao that took on the US lead UN forces in the Korean war. China for a long long time has for the first time shown the world that she can stood on her own against even the strongest of opponent. It was under Mao that China become a nuclear power and a permanent member of the UNSC. No countries big and small would dare to do what they did before to China again. You have to agree that Mao and CCP did delivered this most important primary wish of all Chinese people that spark all the political movements in early 20th century.

Without China sufficiently confident in her security, China could not have been in the position to negotiate the opening up and begin the rapid development that we have witness for the last thirty years.

 

[applesauce]

You forget the most important gift that Mao brought to China, national security.

In the hundred year before Mao took over, China has signed over 1000 unequal treaties that has cede territory, paid over astronomical amount of reparations, concession of administrative rights in lease territories, tolerating station of foreign military and police troop in China territory, concession of tariffs, legal rights and sphere of influence to large powerful and tiny countries that China has not even heard of alike. China was humiliated over and over again.

It was Mao that galvanized the Chinese people to stand up and defend China. It was Mao that took on the US lead UN forces in the Korean war. China for a long long time has for the first time shown the world that she can stood on her own against even the strongest of opponent. It was under Mao that China become a nuclear power and a permanent member of the UNSC. No countries big and small would dare to do what they did before to China again. You have to agree that Mao and CCP did delivered this most important primary wish of all Chinese people that spark all the political movements in early 20th century.

Without China sufficiently confident in her security, China could not have been in the position to negotiate the opening up and begin the rapid development that we have witness for the last thirty years.

basically this. after korea, china suddenly became a much bigger factory in the world, given that, the UN led by the USA got pushed to a stalemate by a dirt poor third world country running on borrowed arms. Mao's aggressiveness(including his willingness to engage in nuclear war saying things like we can afford 400 million casualties which scared even allies), if you will, showed that china would, and more importantly, could defend itself against anyone and subsequently allowed Deng to push for economic reform and lowing the military spending to rather dangerously low levels. that said, Mao had his problem thats why Deng gave Mao the 30-70 assessment.

 

[Snomannen]

LOL~ isn;t it Chinese hobby to show old map to justified their claims?
The first nine-line (thirteen to be exact) dash claim also appear around the same time those two maps were made, which become the basis of what today Chinese government claim (with some modification)

You have read my other points, you know that "being old" is not the only reason/excuse.

The difference is, the Chinese saw no hope to reclaim part of Siberia and Mongolia from "mother Soviet Russia" control, so it officially relinquish the claim.
But for SCS, the Chinese saw great possibility for them to grab some slice of what suppose to be their former vassals, so the conflict continues till now.

Of course the level of power is the main matter, since Power = Truth.
But you have to know that China don't claim territories from Thailand and Myanmar etc either.
India took back Goa by force, the action was based on the claim of its former Indian border.
Argentina doesn't give up Falkland based on its history.
Even Indonesia tried to found a "Greater United Indonesia" and invade its neighbors.

Compare with the others, China's action is actually really normal and "reasonable".

Even the funniest thing is how Official State Media justified the relinquishment of Mongolia.

Rough translation Highlight: Acknowledging Mongolian independence was not only the genius decree from Great Leader Mao, but also something that was right and proper, only to be celebrated with jubilation, by the China-Loving Chinese citizens...... Oddly enough there were still peoples with suzeraintive thinking among us, it seems that (for them) it is forbidden that Mongolia not be drawn into China-Map. They were indeed intoxicated by Han-supremacism.

Seems, these intoxicated Chinese still exists~

I have read this article earlier, which is as stupid as that one in #1:
1. The independence of Outer Mongolia is nothing related to the Mongolian ethic, nor even the so-called "Han-supremacism". The fact is that most of the Mongolian (Inner) were pro-China and prefer being one of the member in the Chinese ethnics group. Those who are pro-China in Outer Mongolia were soon eliminated by the communist party.
2. The independence of Outer Mongolia isn't a "mistake", but the name "is".
Greece was dissatisfied about the republic of Macedonia is "stolen" from their ancient Greek empire Empire of Macedonia. It is just like Pakistan naming themselves Mughal or Russia's Kaliningrad naming themselves Prussia.
3. This article try to criticize KMT by taking the independence of OM as a advantage. It's nothing but slapping their own faces.


If you look at the description, it said: "中華失地領土" (Lost Chinese Land)
In the strictest sense, for ultranationalist, it is "map of Lost China" or "Map of what suppose to be Chinese Land if not lost". The map I shown was just to mock and ridicule them.

Depends on what "中華" means in this map.
Is it mean "British" CW, or "British" territories.

Well, whatsoever, so troublesome.


I am talking about the ultranationalist claim~ (see my first post)

Otherwise, which Chinese would claim ryukyu as Chinese? Of course chinese ultranationalists. The map I shown was just to mock and ridiculte them. Even you yourself acknowledge such thing is impossible, but given that a lot of ultranationalists elements still lingers into Chinese central government, it is not that kind of impossible anyway.

In fact, every ridiculous Chinese claim was all started by ultranationalist, some which eventually become accepted by Chinese norm (South China Sea). South China Sea is one of the successful "scenario" made by the ultranationalist to claim. The failed one is Mongolia and Siberia. Now, they are trying to stir up Ryukyu islands in wake of dispute with Japan

"ultra nationalist claim" such be criticized for sure, just like if China is really claiming those Japanese islands, China such be blamed. Such action cause nothing but trouble. But what is exactly you description of "ultra nationalists"

 

[cnleio]

These Japanese or Ryukyuan very interesting ...

 

[longyi]

US hoist by its own pivot petard- Okinawa



It is perhaps premature to announce the death of the US pivot to Asia, but the patient looks less than healthy. The US effort to orchestrate a win-win economic and security regime in Asia through selective and constructive pressure on China is being undercut by an ally that sees its importance, security, and prosperity eroding as China rises.

That nation is Japan, which is threatening to frustrate the US plan for a new paradigm in Asia, and replace it with the dismal Middle Eastern model of confrontation and containment, one that the Obama administration is desperate to escape.

In this context, we can take an instructive look at the latest kerfuffle in Sino-Japanese relations, the article by in People's Daily by two Chinese scholars calling into question Japan's title to all the Ryukyu Islands in addition to the Senkakus, including the big one - Okinawa.

Seduced by the prospect of another China-bashing peep show, seemingly oblivious of the Japanese government's concerted campaign to skew coverage of its disputes with China, and too lazy to read the original article (which apparently appeared only in Chinese, got jerked after the intended uproar was generated, and now seems to exist only on Chinese message boards), most of the media missed the true import of the story.

The drift of the article is that after World War II the United States returned sovereignty of the entire Ryukyu chain, not just the Senkakus, to Japan on legally dodgy basis As the estimable Martin Fravel of MIT pointed out (and the Japan Times quite commendably reported), this was not an attempt to claim Chinese sovereignty over Okinawa:

The scholars aren't necessarily saying that the Ryukyus belong to China, said Taylor Fravel, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies China's territorial claims. They are raising the possibility that Japan's ownership could be disputed because the islands' rulers in past centuries had tributary relations with imperial China, he said.

"These are perhaps the most serious scholars to date to make this insinuation," Fravel said.

The article emerged in the context of Okinawan alienation with rule from Tokyo, disenchantment that has to do with central government highhandedness as well as the continual irritation of the basing issue. Okinawan dissatisfaction is growing as Japanese nationalism (and impatience with Okinawan presumption) becomes the lingua franca of Japanese politics, feeding a sense of disenfranchisement which carries the faintest whiff of separatism. Chinese media follows the unhappy-Okinawa story assiduously.

Xinhua's report on Japan's "national sovereignty day" celebrations - a new exercise in right-wing nationalist hagiography - two weeks ago killed two birds with one stone by a) pointing up Okinawan dissatisfaction and b) linking it to the muddled sovereignty issue:

The Japanese government on Sunday for first time commemorated the day that the country ended the US occupation and recovered its sovereignty in 1952 after its defeat in the World War II.

The government held a ceremony, in which the Japanese Imperial Couple, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as well as about 390 lawmakers, prefectural governors and government officials participated. ...

Okinawa, Japan's southernmost island prefecture that was returned by the United States in 1972, consider April 28 as "day of insult" and oppose the central government's sovereignty recovery ceremony.

The prefecture's governor Hirokazu Nakaima skipped the ceremony and local assembly members also staged protests in the city of Ginowan in the prefecture, according to reports. [2]

Nudging Okinawans

So, the real purpose of the People's Daily think piece was to encourage Okinawan particularism - or, at the very least, publicly expressed dissatisfaction with Tokyo - and thereby further undermine Japan's rather tenuous claims to the Senkakus.

For bonus points, the article's authors proposed making representations to the United States - which is demonstrably queasy over the whole Senkaku sovereignty issue - to do the right thing, at least behind the scenes, and address the contested issue of overall Rykyu sovereignty:

Although under the current circumstances the United States can't be expected to be upright in speech and action about the matter - it would be a matter of "asking the tiger for its own skin" [exhorting somebody to do something against their own interest] - nevertheless, China should make efforts based on the principles of its position and try achieve a better situation through its diplomacy with the United States.

The Japanese government went predictably batshit over this attempt to support a narrative of Okinawan separatism and US re-insertion into the whole Ryukyu issue on China's behalf and reframed it as a Chinese exercise in territorial aggrandizement that threatened the precious US bases on Okinawa.

The world media - which perhaps will one day be more careful about reporting on Chinese-language stories filtered through the Japanese press - obligingly followed on. The judge's trophy for gormlessness (sorry, no link) goes to a certain Western journalist, who reported the story as:

A mouthpiece of China's Communist party has claimed that the Japanese Island of Okinawa, home to several major US military bases, should be ceded to Beijing.

The consequences of a Japan working to reassert its national dignity and control its economic and security destiny are still underestimated by the punditocracy in United States, if not by the US government itself. Writing in Forbes, Stephen Harner did acknowledge creeping anxieties about Japan's assertive posture:

[Prime Minister Shinzo] Abe, a romantic nationalist, is proving a problematic, and potentially disastrous leader for Japan in its relations with its neighbors (and increasingly, I suspect, with the United States). Both in character and mentality he and his coterie are yesterday's men, not the forward looking leaders Japan needs. [3]

However, Mr Harner chose to look beyond Prime Minister Abe's rather off-putting retro-nationalist persona to conclude with an optimistic vision of Japan's future:

I support Abe's intended change in Japan's constitution because I see it as a necessary step toward a Japanese foreign and defense policy and capability independent of the United States, eventual abrogation of the US-Japan mutual defense alliance, and pursuit by Japan of a Swiss-like (non-nuclear) armed neutrality between the US and China, the only position for Japan that is likely to be stable, sustainable and in Japan's interest over time.

Regardless of who is in the prime minister's seat, I suspect that 21st century Japan is not going to look like the Switzerland of the Pacific.

For instance, I did not notice Switzerland sending the chief of staff of its putatively defensive army 3,000 miles, or nearly 5,000 kilometers, to Kolkata to meet with India's commander for the Eastern Theatre (which handles the frontline duties confronting China in Arunachal Pradesh), apparently to counter-program against the state visit to India of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, as Japan did this week. [4]

And I wouldn't put my bet on "stable" and "sustainable" either - or "neutral" or "non-nuclear" for that matter.

Japan's politics is now driven by more than a sense of political, economic, and strategic malaise inspired by two decades of slow growth, political gridlock, and the well-founded anxiety that rising China is eating Japan's bento box lunch as a disinterested US looks on.

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party is working to transform Japan's sense of demoralization into a narrative of national crisis that translates into political dominance.

A member of Prime Minister Abe's cabinet told the Wall Street Journal:

Mr Yamamoto said the Abe cabinet viewed Japan as having its back against the wall. "Everyone shares the same sense of crisis," he said. "If we don't do something now, Japan won't ever come back." [5]

Hiahiko Okazaki, head of the avowedly hawkish Okazaki Institute think tank, foresees a sea-change in Japanese attitudes that involves an assisted transition to a Ride of the Valkyries style of nationalism.

It should be noted that his conservative vision also involves a repudiation of US tutelage that dovetails with Okazaki's well-honed sense of the Sino-Japanese rivalry, and puts the US State Department on notice that "Japan reborn" is going to be something other than a tractable ally:

The Abe Cabinet is the first conservative government in Japan in a long time. I believe, roughly speaking, conservatism in Japan faces two major tasks.

The first is eradication of the so-called postwar historical view. This view was a product of the US policy in the earlier days of the postwar Occupation. US Occupation authorities taught Japanese children that all of Japan's past and traditions were bad in an attempt to completely eradicate Japan's war potential, both materially and spiritually.

The US revised this policy as soon as the Cold War began in order to make Japan a reliable ally. But the education based on this policy was taken over by pro-communist leftist elements in Japan, whose main purpose was to neutralize Japan in the realm of intellectual and moral capabilities. This led to the emergence of the leftist biased historical view.

No nation can survive when its history and traditions are denied. Eradication of this leftist historical view has been a long-term issue for the Japanese nation and it has to be continuously pursued in classrooms and other educational arenas. [6]

Even if nostalgic nationalists are in the minority in public opinion polls, their acolytes are in power and can set the national agenda, override majority doubts, and, most importantly, foreclose competing options for their successors ... especially if they can invoke the specter of a national crisis.

The constitution beckons

And big doings are expected for the second half of the year - if the Liberal Democratic Party trounces the fractured opposition as expected to control a two-thirds majority in the upper house of Japan's legislature and adds revision of Japan's constitution, including its restrictions on military adventures outside Japan's borders, to the national renaissance/standing up to China dialogue.

So far, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, has successfully kept the international focus on revival of Japan's stagnant economy through "Abenomics", a gigantic roll of the quantitative easing dice that has not coincidentally strengthened Abe's political hand by delivering two highly anticipated benefits to the LDP's well-heeled corporate base - a skyrocketing Nikkei index and a plummeting yen.

However, his administration has simultaneously engaged in a flurry of diplomatic, economic, and security engagement with China's current and potential antagonists from India and Sri Lanka to Vietnam to the Philippines, Taiwan, and Russia.

On May 3, Asahi Shimbun - which has emerged as a reliable conduit for anti-Abe anxiety inside Japan - reported on the recent visit of Deputy Prime Minister Aso to Sri Lanka:

Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso's visit to Sri Lanka yielded promises of stronger ties between the two countries, bringing Japan a step closer to its goal of building a coalition against China. ...

Aso and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are currently conducting a broad range of diplomatic activities to counter China's growing influence. ... When Abe first served as prime minister in 2006, Aso, who was then foreign minister, proposed making the area from Southeast Asia to central and eastern Europe an "arc of freedom and prosperity."

The strategy was intended to contain China by helping Asian countries move forward with democratization and the development of their economies. [7]

Don't worry. Mr Aso said "Arc of Freedom and Prosperity". He didn't say "Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere", and I do believe that Japan's plans for regional pre-eminence include exploiting the United States, not confronting it.

If and when constitutional revision goes through and the doctrine of "collective self-defense" permits military operations beyond Japan's borders, Japan looks more and more like an destabilizing regional power that relies on a narrative of existential threat, heightened polarization with its enemies, and the expectation that the US has no alternative but to back it up in its disputes with its neighbors even when that works at cross purposes to US interests and objectives for the region.

This creates a dilemma for the United States and its master plan for securing US pre-eminence in Asia. President Obama, for reasons not entirely of his own making but inseparable from his inability to wheel and deal with dictators, decided that G-2 - a US-PRC condominium that would order East Asia to everyone's satisfaction - was not a viable option.

Instead, the Obama foreign policy team decided that a concerted display of forceful (but not hostile!) pressure by the United States and its allies was needed to extract satisfactory Chinese behavior in the short term and integration of the PRC into a US-led liberal-norm diplomatic and economic architecture in the long term.

Call it the "pivot to Asia".

The economic keystone of this coercive architecture is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a "high standards trade pact" that pointedly excluded China while not even trying to address the contradiction of welcoming Vietnam - a nation whose rickety mixed-socialist economy mimics the Chinese economy ... from 10 years back.

Unwanted turn on trade talks

With the TPP, perhaps the Obama administration was too clever for its good. I have a feeling - well, I hope - that the Obama administration emitted a hollow groan of foreboding when Prime Minister Abe announced during his US visit that Japan would join the TPP negotiations.

Abe's enthusiasm for the TPP process appears to be genuine - Japan had to lobby all 10 current participants to obtain approval to join - even though the near-term benefits to Japan appear relatively marginal.

It should be noted that his conservative vision also involves a repudiation of US tutelage that dovetails with Okazaki's well-honed sense of the Sino-Japanese rivalry, and puts the US State Department on notice that "Japan reborn" is going to be


something other than a tractable ally:

The Abe Cabinet is the first conservative government in Japan in a long time. I believe, roughly speaking, conservatism in Japan faces two major tasks.

The first is eradication of the so-called postwar historical view. This view was a product of the US policy in the earlier days of the postwar Occupation. US Occupation authorities taught Japanese children that all of Japan's past and traditions were bad in an attempt to completely eradicate Japan's war potential, both materially and spiritually.

The US revised this policy as soon as the Cold War began in order to make Japan a reliable ally. But the education based on this policy was taken over by pro-communist leftist elements in Japan, whose main purpose was to neutralize Japan in the realm of intellectual and moral capabilities. This led to the emergence of the leftist biased historical view.

No nation can survive when its history and traditions are denied. Eradication of this leftist historical view has been a long-term issue for the Japanese nation and it has to be continuously pursued in classrooms and other educational arenas. [6]

Even if nostalgic nationalists are in the minority in public opinion polls, their acolytes are in power and can set the national agenda, override majority doubts, and, most importantly, foreclose competing options for their successors ... especially if they can invoke the specter of a national crisis.

Call it the "pivot to Asia".

The economic keystone of this coercive architecture is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a "high standards trade pact" that pointedly excluded China while not even trying to address the contradiction of welcoming Vietnam - a nation whose rickety mixed-socialist economy mimics the Chinese economy ... from 10 years back.

Unwanted turn on trade talks

With the TPP, perhaps the Obama administration was too clever for its good. I have a feeling - well, I hope - that the Obama administration emitted a hollow groan of foreboding when Prime Minister Abe announced during his US visit that Japan would join the TPP negotiations.

Abe's enthusiasm for the TPP process appears to be genuine - Japan had to lobby all 10 current participants to obtain approval to join - even though the near-term benefits to Japan appear relatively marginal.

In the back-of-the-envelope version (and not taking into account the inevitable backroom deal-cutting, especially in the automotive sector), by conservative calculations the TPP grows total Japanese GDP about 0.5% (with about half of the growth in industrial production offset by a spectacular cratering of agricultural production as domestic rice, beef, and pork lose tariff protection and disappear beneath an import avalanche). [8]

Economic factors aside, the TPP factor has already had a beneficial knock-on effect to Japan's negotiating position in a raft of other trade pacts, as Professor Aurelia George Mulgan of the University of South Wales wrote:

Japan's decision to participate in the TPP negotiations appears to have spurred a whole series of other trade developments, including:
the first round of trilateral China-Japan-South Korea FTA talks, beginning less than two weeks after the TPP announcement on 15 March;
the start of serious Japan-EU talks on an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) in April; and
the launching of negotiations on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in May, demonstrating how both emulation and competition can act as triggers for FTA diffusion.

From a US perspective, the RCEP and China-Japan-South Korea FTA are both potentially rival blocs to the TPP, but Japan will be advantageously positioned in all three. This has not escaped Chinese commentators who note how Japan has welcomed the opportunity to maximise their profits by establishing a footing in the TPP while not closing the door to cooperation with China through means such as the China-Japan-South Korea FTA. [9]

Trade blocs, in addition to their economic significance, are also important geopolitical gambits in the Japanese struggle to deal with China. Per Mulgan:

Abe ... recently told the Japanese Diet, "Japan's TPP participation will result in Japan and the United States virtually leading the TPP ... there are advantages to Japan and the United States forming a team to make rules for the free trade area."

Which is why despairing groans should rise from the bosom of the Obama administration. As noted above, unanimous agreement is stipulated for a new nation to join the TPP negotiations. Behind closed doors, apparently lesser powers such as Brunei allow the US to speak on their behalf on membership issues.

But I doubt Japan's plans for its future security and prosperity involve surrendering to the United States the precious right to blackball China.

If Japan is able to join the TPP club on its own terms, it will probably possess a de facto veto over any PRC application to join the talks. In other words, if current political trends continue, China may never join the TPP. TPP policy toward China - the key raison d'etre for the TPP - will become hostage to Japan's priorities and strategy.

For the United States, that raises the possibility that the pivot to Asia will not create a region-wide open market system with Chinese buy-in that will give full play to US competitive advantage in technology, patent-protected products, and sophisticated services, thereby enriching the US corporations that are the TPP's most enthusiastic promoters and, in fact, are basically writing the treaty's texts and talking points and supporting the initiative through campaign contributions and public relations expenditures.

Instead, maybe the Asian economy will plod ahead with only two cylinders firing: a continental Eurasian bloc of state capitalist economies that look to China as their primary demand engine, and a maritime bloc of Asian democracies banded together by their shared China-related security anxieties (which Japan will happily foment) but hobbled by the fact that the two biggest participants, Japan and the United States, both want to export their way out of their economic slumps.

Hijack, Middle East style

If Japan holds the whip hand for US policy in Asia, it will be an unwelcome recapitulation of the fiasco in the Middle East that the Obama administration is trying to leave behind.

In the Middle East, the United States has largely lost control of the security agenda thanks to the Arab Spring, but also thanks to the desire of key US allies to seize the initiative and shape policy through their unilateral actions. Israel and Saudi Arabia advance a narrative of existential crisis centered on Iran and its nuclear program and conduct independent security policies that exacerbate regional polarization and force the US to abandon rapprochement with Iran and back the narrower priorities of its allies instead.

Following the precedent of America's vexatious allies in the Middle East, Japan is also advancing a narrative of national crisis, polarizing the region into pro- and anti-China blocs, and exploiting the security alliance to invoke US support that would otherwise be given grudgingly or not at all.

I have the feeling that President Obama hoped and expected that by pivoting to Asia - a region of peace, prosperity, and rapid growth generally sympathetic to a dominant US security role - the US would find a way of profitably leveraging its military and economic advantages into market and diplomatic opportunities throughout Asia.

Unfortunately, by piggybacking on the pivot - basically "soft China containment that dares not speak its name" - Japan is working to wrong-foot the US and establish itself as the key security and economic intermediary in an Asia bifurcated into China and anti-China blocs.

The Obama administration is showing various signs of unwillingness to proceed down this dangerous, expensive, and well-trodden path. Tom Donilon, the National Security Adviser openly frets about the difficulties of managing the Chinese relationship, difficulties that are certainly exacerbated if they include Japan openly goading the PRC to advance its own destabilizing regional agenda in the expectation of US backing.

Kurt Campbell, the proud pappy of the pivot, now cautiously redefines it as "a rebalancing", as if the game-changing injection of the US into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' island disputes with China never happened, and the most important goal of the US Asian effort was no more than the sweet, sweet victory of slaking the thirst of freedom-loving (and, occasionally, Muslim-massacring) Burmese with legal, un-smuggled Coca Cola.

In recent weeks there have been valiant attempts to assert that the pivot as conceived by the United States was "not about China", in the words of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey. [10]

And, in a way that the Obama administration never anticipated, this is true. The pivot to Asia isn't about China anymore. It's about Japan.

Asia Times Online :: Japan News and Japanese Business and Economy


The article by People Daily was brilliance and timed perfectly!

 

[Sanchez]

Ryukiu islands are not "owned" by Japanese according to US-Japan agreement. It should not be Chinese either!

Diaoyu islands are Chinese, not part of Ryukiu!

I support the independence of Ryukiu!

 

[Vitchilo]

China needs some Lebensraum.

No seriously, China should shut the hell up and stop trying to invade other people.

China is like Nazi Germany... it says it's been humiliated in the past (post-WW1 vs colonial era) and now it's building up it's army to get back their pride and territory.

Very dangerous situation.

 

[ChineseTiger1986]

Down to the US Imperialism and Japanese Fascism, here is the true voice of the Liuqiu people.

 

[Foxhound31]

Sadly if you follow China's logic of it's history and how it owns everything, then I suppose it's fair for Rome to start claiming most of Europe as being under it's control too...after all most of Europe was part of the Roman Empire back in the day...

 

[Zero_wing]

Sadly if you follow China's logic of it's history and how it owns everything, then I suppose it's fair for Rome to start claiming most of Europe as being under it's control too...after all most of Europe was part of the Roman Empire back in the day...

Because they miss out on that back in the 19th century when everybody made them their you know hahahahhaha

 

[Snomannen]

Sadly if you follow China's logic of it's history and how it owns everything, then I suppose it's fair for Rome to start claiming most of Europe as being under it's control too...after all most of Europe was part of the Roman Empire back in the day...

Unfortunately Italy isn't an official successor of the Roma Empire.
Please know the difference.

 

[Zero_wing]

Unfortunately Italy isn't an official successor of the Roma Empire.
Pleas know the different.

before that please check your spelling and try to reply again