Korea is the ever-sharpening focus of the growing tensions between China and Japan because moving Korea out of the security alliance led by the U.S. and Japan is the proximate objective of China’s grand design for the North Pacific.
If underlying geopolitical factors are the overriding cause of the recent decline in relations between China and Japan, then the current trajectory is likely to persist, for there is little reason to believe that those factors will change.
As in previous millennia of history, China’s objective for its periphery—the East Asia/Western Pacific region—is subordination of some kind or degree. Japan, being the only indigenous major power in the region, and allied formally with the United States (Russia having ceased to be an Asian power), is the main obstacle to that desired suzerainty.
The recent tensions between China and Japan are threatening to bring the world’s top three economies—the United States, China, and Japan—into a major armed confrontation.
As U.S. President Barack Obama gets ready to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping following the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing next week, relations between the world’s two largest economies are mired in a troubling inertia.
Street protests for free elections in Hong Kong have now stretched into a second month, and there is no sign of resolution. The movement, known as Occupy Central With Love and Peace, is demanding changes to the restrictive framework Beijing has imposed for the election of Hong Kong’s next leader, the chief executive, in 2017.
In case you need a macabre laugh. Transcript is available here if you can’t stand watching Jang Il Hun compare human rights in his country favorably to those in South Korea.
Throughout the reform area, top Chinese leaders have usually risen to their positions after gaining substantial experience as provincial-level leaders.
As some members of the Xi Jinping leadership retreated to the seaside summer resort at Beidaihe, several events and trends converged in anticipation of a Central Committee plenum later this fall.
