Rise of The Dragon

On January 1st, fresh regulations from the government of Hainan, China’s southernmost province, came into effect, requiring all vessels planning to fish in waters under Hainan’s jurisdiction to get permission from the Chinese authorities. Since China claims parts of the South China Sea which are also claimed by others, the rules seem highly provocative.Almost immediately U.S. bombers flew over 'self-proclaimed' Chinese air-space, beginning a series of tense melee amidst the backdrop of Kim's Korea defying world leaders in a major showdown of mettle display over nuclear and military prowess.With his overt nationalism and historical revisionism,the right-wing nationalist,(The British Rupert Wingfield-Hayes of BBC described him as "far more right wing than most of his predecessors")charismatic liberal democratic Premier of Japan(notorious for 'abenomics') had a whole lot of condemnation saying that China and Japan are in a similar situation to that of  Germany and Britain a century ago.American political scientist Robert Kagan says that Washington has taken on the role of the British Empire in East Asia(playing 'The Great Game'), and the US must make it clear to Beijing ,the Germany of the time that it wont sit cross-armed if China behaves in a way that seems unacceptable.In his bestseller-The Sleepwalkers, which describes how Europe entered the bloody catastrophe of World War I, historian Christopher Clark comments on today's global order: "Since the end of the Cold War, a system of bipolar stability has made way for a more complex and unpredictable array of forces, including declining empires and rising powers -- a state of affairs that invites comparison with the Europe of 1914," he writes.

A similar situation had preceded a few months back last year with China giving permission to private contractors to extract resources from the disputed Senkaku islands .Eventhough having the better and legitimate claim over the islands,Japan has followed a policy of 'wait and watch',fearful of stroking the dragon.Almost every day, Chinese patrol boats and the Japanese coast guard are engaging in risky naval manoeuvres and power games in the region. In December, a Chinese reconnaissance plane flew over the disputed islands at a low altitude.With such acts of provocation, Beijing is alarming the Japanese. Their biggest hope for Abe is that he can bring the ailing economy back to health. But because they also fear China, which replaced Japan in 2010 as the world's second-largest industrial power, Japanese voters decided to give the stern,pro-active nationalist politician a second chance as prime minister.Since America has a mutual-security treaty with Japan, which it has repeatedly affirmed covers the Senkakus, the risk is indeed of a global conflict. Elsewhere at Davos, a Chinese 'professional' speaking in a forum where his identity was kept confidential, shared a rather terrifying analysis of the stand-off over the island. http://www.businessinsider.com/china-japan-conflict-could-lead-to-war-2014-1. Seeming to regard limited conflict as inevitable, he suggested China might be contemplating a symbolic 'invasion', planting a flag on the islands.Expectantly, the Japanese emperor visited India in these troubled times. But India, although armed with a formidable naval presence, is stretched in the vastness of Indian ocean. Moreover, it is engaged in the formidable task of checking illegal migrants and influx of terrorists from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka; all three of the countries refusing to co-operate in this regard. Upon this, it carries the burden of securing safe passages to cargo ships in the gulf of Aden from Somali pirates, in the western hemisphere of Indian ocean, opposite to the South China Sea. This is complicated by the lack of efforts by other European or Arabian countries in securing the world's busiest trade route.
China's motives in this conflict are clear:the country has surpassed the US as the world's largest trading nation,and 90 percent of Chinese exports are shipped by sea. At the same time, the rapidly growing country has been racing to establish its naval presence, just as the German Empire did over 100 years ago. Yet it bothers Beijing's military leaders that Chinese access to the Pacific is blocked by a chain of islands and peninsulas that are controlled by American allies.

Not surprisingly,Abe didn't wince once to accept the offer to preside as chief guest of this year's Republic day parade. http://www.livemint.com/Politics/LqDwd0wyIbUZsXbA46cYdJ/Japanese-PM-Shinzo-Abes-India-visit-to-be-closely-watched-b.html.

http://rt.com/op-edge/india-japan-game-changer-china-366/
On Dec. 16, Abe recaptured the majority in the lower house of parliament for his conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which was voted out of power only three years ago. Now Abe wants to lead the ageing and insecure Asian economic power back to its former greatness and, most of all, to rid it of its unpopular "postwar regime."In saying that, Abe is referring to what the American occupiers imposed on the Japanese Empire after it lost World War II: its pacifist constitution, a relatively liberal education system and an understanding of history that is wholly foreign to Abe,which has sometimes led to loggerheads with it's allies--U.S. and S.Korea.This reading, which the Allied victors inserted into court decisions in the 1948 war crimes trials in Tokyo, painted both Japan and Germany as aggressors in need of permanent taming.In 1993, Tokyo officially apologized for abducting at least 200,000 Asian women to be used as forced prostitutes. Abe, on the other hand, publicly questions whether the military actually forced the so-called "comfort women" to provide sexual services.The premier wants to return Japan to its former position as a "beautiful country," which is also the title of a book in which he describes his vision for the nation's future. He wants this new Japan to re-embrace the values promoted by his father, former Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe (1924-1991), and practised by his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi (1896-1987), whom he admires.In July 2006 he denied that Manchukuo was a puppet state.

Japan certainly is not the first nation to run behind the reliable,peaceful Indian military.Interestingly, it was India, under Nehru that had been one of the first nations to recognise People's Republic of China's legitimacy.Nehru argued for its inclusion in the United Nations and refused to brand the Chinese as the aggressors in their conflict with Korea.He sought to establish warm and friendly relations with China in 1950, and hoped to act as an intermediary to bridge the gulf and tensions between the communist states and the Western bloc.He was supportive of China moving from the 'oppressed' to the 'the oppressor' by supporting them against 'Uncle Sam' during the end of Chinese civil war,purely to protect themselves from neo-imperialism,so much so that he supported the PRC's claim to a permanent seat in the security council,which he himself rejecting it.Clearly a historical blunder.
Almost every pacific and south-east asian http://www.economist.com/node/21560585?zid=306&ah=1b164dbd43b0cb27ba0d4c3b12a5e227 ,and few African countries http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/chinese-investment-in-africa-boosts-economies-but-worries-many-a-934826-2.html live under a constant fear of chinese expansionist policies and have a reason to worry that history is repeating itself.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/global-ambitions-china-seeks-role-in-world-as-second-superpower-a-864358.html

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/growing-chinese-interest-in-the-arctic-worries-international-community-a-879654.html

http://www.economist.com/node/18111784?zid=306&ah=1b164dbd43b0cb27ba0d4c3b12a5e227

Resulting in the usual tirade of combined military drills, provocations and accusations.Only this time it was serious.Abe now has reasons to shed the self defence army and water down his country's strictly pacifist constitution,and begin developing a proper army.Elated that he would be in acquiring nuclear weapons(technically,piece of cake), he is sure to tread carefully with the Fukushima incident and the opposition party still breathing down his neck.His party's recent win in the Tokyo elections doesn't prove much.It is no bonkers that Abe is lobbying hard for a united world against this expansionist mind,he is certainly aware of it's futileness with the Chinese gaining supremacy in almost every sphere. Abe proposed a "Broader Asia" alliance of democracies as a counterweight to China's growing influence in the realm of economics and military power.A link of the India-Australia is said to be the logical corollary in an attempt to create a new quadrilateral of military cooperation which China has labelled the "Asian NATO".Abe's Indian foreign policy was pragmatic, as it was based on boosting Japan's resurgent economic indicators, while gaining a crucial partner in Asia.Joseph Nye, a political scientist at Harvard, has warned of the dangers of the current vogue for historical analogy. Sensibly he points out that “war is never inevitable, though the belief that it is can become one of its causes.” However, if Mr Abe’s remarks were intended not just to score debating points, but to draw attention to the very serious risks this argument carries, then he should be applauded.His visit to the Yakusini Shrine only rubs salt into the wounds.The point he seems to be making is not so much about growing military rivalry and naval competition—though of course, with the tense dispute over the Senkaku('Diaoyu'-in China) islands, that is also a factor. Rather he was making a commonly made salutary argument: that those who think war is impossible between China and Japan because they are so intertwined economically overlook the way a previous wave of fast-growing trade and globalisation ended—in a cataclysmic war.Though many have their reservations about Chinese growth, I for one am certain that it is already a superpower.While the whole world is busy,with the europeans' fretting over their economy,Arabs boiled in political revolutions(read as 'anarchy'),asians' dealing with regional disparities and fractured governance,Americans'  fulfilling their destiny of protecting mankind(Read as 'democracy') against the rise of jihadi forces,establishing stable(read as 'puppet') governments and their never-ending assault against socialism and Eastern blocks, it is a no brainer that China has been cunningly picking up all the broken pieces,promising to repair and ready to take the baton from U.S.A.Their only concern being lack of allies and hence their courtship of India.The Chinese policy of deriding India in the past,for Asian domination,shall certainly haunt them in the quest for global domination.Their efforts to revive the silk trade route that was once a pride to both India and China is just a gimmick in the backdrop of establishing ports in Pakistan, Bangladesh,SriLanka,Maldives,Myanmar and the Africas, virtually choking India.

https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&cad=rja&ved=0CEgQqQIwBg&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailymail.co.uk%2Findiahome%2Findianews%2Farticle-2566881%2FChinas-maritime-silk-road-proposals-not-peaceful-seem.html&ei=IQIPU6WQFMj8oASItoDgAQ&usg=AFQjCNEx9WnrLFy0VL48rXZHahUPw9mZsQ&bvm=bv.61965928,d.cGU

.Ensuring, a host of Indian politicians from all spectrum of ideologies-including the 'political untouchables' to be vocal of the 'Dragon Wagon'.Clearly the Indian foreign policy needs a big overhaul. Of course,the developing and third world country leaders are not brain-dead(Albeit the few lot).They do see the implications of 'beating the Chinese drums', but they seem to be just riding the wave,after feeling distrust over other superpowers.It is a common fact that everything the officials in Beijing have devised,acted and taken sides purely in self-interest and has nothing to do with the concept of 'humanitarian grounds'.As is evident in franchising of veto vote only during self concerns.Though they have turned blind eye about their duties as a permanent member of Security council in matters of climate,human & media rights,peacekeeping, funding falling economies etc. China dreams of world-domination.Nurturing this idea every day, it has almost frown into a giant banyan tree.Even left-oriented news houses such as 'The Hindu' have no qualms in expressing this apprehension, as was shown in their article :Coming full circle.
Moscow still avenges defeat in 1905 in a nasty dispute with Japan over four islands at the bottom of the Kuril chain that Tokyo claims.But it also equally true that  revenge has been 'served cold' at the ending stages of WW2. President Putin is as unlikely as any of his predecessors to consider relinquishing them while showing what a tough guy he is in Crimea. He can also wield a commercial club over Japan, which has no oil and gas, much of which it imports from Russia.South Korea and Japan, when not quarrelling with each other, may play Russia against China to avoid getting crushed in a bear hug by either of them.Might Japanese tensions with China, and the need for natural gas, drive Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe toward Moscow? Abe is already uncertain about the strength of Japan’s alliance with the U.S.
In 2011, Obama announced a "pivot" to the Asia-Pacific region, shifting the American approach to China. The move was seen as a way of not only continuing US cooperation with China, but also containing Beijing's power in the region. "As a Pacific nation, the United States will play a larger and long-term role in shaping this region and its future," Obama said.
Beijing spokespersons reject this fear saying that they are "acting only in self defence,that is natural only for all nations,since Japan and U.S.A among others, have ADIZ of their own".But it is evident that China fails to acknowledge claims and rights of other minion nations, asserting lone dominance in the region since their ADIZ overlap deep inside other nations'.Clearly,hard-liners in the Chinese disregard nations' sovereignty and boundaries unilaterally changing the status quo in the East China Sea, escalating the situation and create a contingency in the waters.
General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Obama's chief military adviser says, "The US military will be obliged to overtly confront China as it faced down the Soviet Union." By 2020, the Pentagon intends to station roughly 60 percent of its naval military forces in the Pacific, including six aircraft carriers and numerous destroyers, cruisers and submarines.In 2011, the US began to expand its military presence in Australia, the first US military buildup in the Pacific since the Vietnam War. In the future, upto four US warships will be allowed to moor in the city-state of Singapore. Since 2011, former wartime opponent Vietnam has allowed the US Navy to use the port of Cam Ranh Bay.Meanwhile, the Philippines are likely to become America's most important partner in a separate, but similar, conflict over disputed islands in the South China Sea. Some 40 percent of international maritime trade passes through those contested waters.Washington and Manila have been negotiating since August on stationing more US Marines in the country. Filipino Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin has already announced that the US will in the future inform his country's armed forces if Chinese ships enter territorial waters claimed by Manila. In exchange, US warships will soon be able return to Subic Bay, a Filipino naval station that the US Navy vacated in 1992.
"The Americans are like spoiled teenagers," writes blogger Jiangchen-jc, who argues that "they have to challenge others in order to prove their uniqueness".Of course,these are the teenagers who in the first place locked horns with the imperialist Japanese regime,leading their foray into WW2 saving the dragon from 'choking in it's own fire'.
http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/arrested-development/

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/study-finds-massive-investment-in-europe-by-chinese-state-companies-a-894570.html
http://www.economist.com/topics/south-china-sea