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A leading international relations expert says open warfare could break out between China and Japan in 2013.
Hugh White, a professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University, says in an article for Fairfax that the protracted dispute between China and Japan over ownership of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands could serve as a flashpoint for military conflict between the two nuclear powers next year.
According to Professor White the dispute over the islands is a symptom of tensions engendered by China’s rise in the Asia-Pacific, and the challenge it poses to American influence in the region. White believes that China’s recent efforts to shore up its claim upon the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands is a means of “pushing back” against US power in the Asia-Pacific.
The Chinese already harbor an intense, long-standing animosity towards Japan for the country’s military aggression during the Second World War, and this latest dispute over a handful of islands in the East China Sea has stirred popular anti-Japanese sentiment into a frenzy.
White notes that such steadily escalating stand-offs over relatively trivial issues frequently serve as the starting point for war, and that under current circumstances there is a significant risk that “escalation will continue until at some point shots are exchanged, and a spiral to war begins that no one can stop.”
According to White the only solution is concession by one or both sides, which will be difficult given the domestic political implications for leaders of either country.
…the crisis will not stop by itself. One side or other, or both, will have to take positive steps to break the cycle of action and reaction. This will be difficult, because any concession by either side would so easily be seen as a backdown, with huge domestic political costs and international implications
Mutual misconceptions abound on all sides and further heighten the risk of a catastrophic outcome. Both China and the US, which is the chief backer and ally of Japan, expect the other party to back off on the grounds that the two countries are economically interdependent, and an open conflict would be immensely detrimental to the interests of both.
Hat tip to Business Insider for drawing White’s controversial assertion to our attention
4 Comments
Alex
The rulers of China seem more interested in money than communist rhetoric… much like those in the US and elsewhere. Unfortunately, war is good for the economy and profits…
Dr Jagabandhu Mishra
The world faces recession for a longer period. Two economic power houses like China and Japan are countries of huge industrial productivity. If there is a conflict between these two giants the economy of the east will suffer considerably.So the dispute needs to be resolved through negotiations and discussions .The conflict must be avoided at any cost to save the region from a nuclear war and its disaster in future.
Mark Harder
This article contains one error of fact serious enough that it should be corrected. Japan is emphatically not a nuclear. The 2 nuclear powers alleged above are China and the US. Any conflict that risks a nuclear response would be as mad as a nuclear conflict with the USSR once was, and is just as unlikely to occur.
White’s article should have at least mentioned past incidents between China and the US and Taiwan over the Asian superpower’s territorial claims to the North and South China Seas, which were resolved peacefully. It did not. His theory that China’s motive in the Diaoyu/Senkaku confrontation is to confront the US and limit our power in the East is not one I have heard before. Other than proposing this rationale for China’s role, the Australian article offers no evidence to support this interpretation. One must recall that enmity between the Asian neighbors has a long history, one capped by what could be termed a holocaust perpetrated by the Japanese occupation before and during WWII. This must make it difficult for the Chinese people to stomach a retreat from this particular Asian nation. While nationalist feeling against the US has been building recently, the historical relations between China and her liberators, particularly the US, has been positive. Still, White’s argument is an interesting one.
hardworker50
It has always been the Communist government’s intent to counter the US’s presence in Asia.
China cannot afford a war for mainly economic reasons as it has finally acknowledged the power of a strong global economy of which it is now a part, and knows that it will control the world’s currency within a decade based on a gold standard, self-sufficiency in coal and iron, and the grip China already holds on other third world nations which need China’s ‘generosity’.
However China will not back down on any of it’s land claims for any reason and will react with violence if cornered. This is based on inherent superiority attitudes from hundreds of years of Imperialism, and hatred of the outside barbarians incensed by colonialism, and general Communist dogma which has always demanded the destruction of the ‘West’.
We can only hoped that the South China Sea nations will fall into line as one and force China to battle on numerous fronts, including India and Tibet.