onthesannyside: As a Chinese saying goes, 'May you live in interesting times'...

Sunday, February 3, 2013

As a Chinese saying goes, 'May you live in interesting times'...

While going through some of my clippings, I came across these two from last year:

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I wondered yesterday if the dynamic for China in the South China Sea had changed since the few years before the turn of the century, after it had made several forays into the Spratly Islands, then settled into a period of uneasy accommodation with the Asean claimant countries.

This article below, aptly headlined "Danger of sleepwalking diplomacy in East Asia", by a former foreign minister of South Korea, is somewhat pessimistic about accommodation among the major players engaged in East Asia, with both the South and East China seas possibly becoming a replay of the great power bungles on the eve of World War One.

He observes especially that historically, "rising powers tend to become too confident too soon, leading them to behave imprudently, which frightens their neighbours". Regarding the South China Sea, he says: "the rhetoric of some Chinese, particularly in the military... suggests that not everyone in the country's leadership is committed wholeheartedly to the [path of peaceful development]"...

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So, if great power politics is so scary, Brewster Rockit has the answer...