It's been a month since United States (US) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote that Asia is now the focus of her country's diplomatic, economic and strategic [1] foreign policy, meaning both stability and instability [2] for the region, depending largely on how Sino-US relations develop as the two countries learn to share [3] the same geopolitical theater.
In China, it still all sounds a lot like an encirclement conspiracy [4], something which Zheng Yongnian [5], director of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore, touched on in this blog post [6] [zh] from last week, which contains an excerpt from his latest book [7] [zh], “The Road to Great Power: China and the Reshaping of World Order,” (通往大国之路:中国与世界秩序的重塑) due out later this month:
中国的地缘政治非常特殊。中国周边有21个国家(与中国陆地相邻的国家有15个,同中国隔海相望的国家有6个)。从上往下,有朝鲜、日本,接下来是东南亚国家,再下来是印度、缅甸。中国是世界上唯一被核武器包围的国家。中国有安全感吗?如果墨西哥、加拿大要发展核武器,美国拼了老命也不会让它们发展。
中国没有国际空间,拿海权来说,中国有海权吗?没有。往东,走不出去,有美、日、澳大利亚、新西兰等国挡着,往印度洋,有印度。印度的唯一假想敌是中国。现在唯一剩下的是南海,但美国等国都对南海感兴趣,如果那里被堵住,中国一点出海口都没有。中国连航空母舰都没有,怎么去投送兵力?怎么去履行国际责任?更不用说国际领导权。
Also, Sara K. added an important point [10] to my previous post, writing that:
If China really wants to prevent the perpetuation of the “China Threat Theory”, they should stop pointing so many missiles at Taiwan – and if the PLA had access to Taiwan, it would be much easier for them to attack Japan. If you point weapons at people, you are going to look like a threat.