China: United States Begins ‘Pacific Century’, Online Nationalism Follows · Global Voices
John Kennedy

Most of China's popular blog portal sites have sections for military news, often buried below panels for entertainment and love/relationship stories. Starting roughly in October with the quiet story that India continues to build up its presence along the border with China, posts on military topics seem to have grown in number and prominence on major blog hosting sites, reaching a peak this past week with reactions to United States (US) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and US President Barack Obama's Pacific swing, which wrapped up in Indonesia on Saturday.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao insists that China is a good neighbor, but much of what's been written in many recent blog posts and comment threads sort of suggests otherwise.
Earlier on Wednesday, Obama's assertion while in Australia that he doesn't fear China became the headline in Chinese reports of his plans to expand US military presence there, and has had emotional comments voted to the top of comment threads on sites such as Tencent [zh], where readers are usually a mix of the liberal and cynical:
奥巴马说话太牛气中国现实需要一个年轻时期的诸葛亮
求求中国那些懦夫们不要在发言了，羞死国人！气死我了！！！！！！
为丧失国土而哭！为美债而怒！为汉奸论而怒火冲霄！
我愿为中华民族而拔刀。。。。。。。。。。
Obama didn't explicitly say this past week that his recent moves are aimed at checking Chinese power in Asia, but Chinese nationalist sentiment has taken them not just as confirmation of a larger strategy to encircle China, but also an expanded approach.
Australian writer and international affairs scholar Yang Hengjun wrote on that [zh] this week:
美国要对付中国，军事围堵当然少不了，而且他正好可以消化十年反恐中剩下的军力。这对于中国是很不妙的，我们过去20年经济大发展就得力于相对和平的国际环境，一旦北京决策者像年轻人一样头脑发热，要在军事上应战，像前苏联一样勒紧裤腰带、穷兵黩武，那么离苏联曾经走过的路就不远了。
在目前的国际环境与历史时期，我认为中美之间开战的可能不是没有，但战场是在经济领域。真正能够打得起来的战争其实是“经济战”，或者说“经济冷战”，军事部署只不过是美国人的大战略的一部分，决定胜负的是经济——是民众的生活水平能否提高，民众是否感到幸福，人心向背等等。其中最关键的因素是价值理念等“软实力”、“巧实力”的交锋。
At this point in history and in this international climate, I don't think that war between China and the US is impossible, but rather that it will be war in the economic sense. The true war that will be fought will be an economic war, or an ‘economic cold war’. Deploying troops is just one part of America's overall strategy. What will determine who wins or loses is the economy, whether people's standard of living is increasing, whether or not the public is satisfied, popular support, etc. The key confrontations will be over things like values and soft and smart power.
[…]
如果我没有说错，中美在经济领域的前哨战已经打响了。事实上，我们已经看到美国在经济上全面出击了。我们告别了“中国可以说不”的时代，迎来的却是“世界开始对中国说不”。
And from comments on Yang's blog post:
不知要到何时中国人成能真真站起来，做一个有尊严的人！！
我们要在软实力上战胜美国，先得战胜国人的心。
美国对中国是从希望到失望。国人只知道美国军舰进入太平洋，只知道希拉里去菲律宾，奥巴马进澳大利亚，美国大兵进驻澳洲，可就是不知道他们为什么来到这里，是谁把他们引到这里来的。
All of ASEAN, it seems, but the Philippines in particular, as it took aim at China during last week's summits in Indonesia.
“Since the US is serious about this,” reads the comment voted most popular (by a large margin) on a Tencent story on Hillary's recent commitment to provide military support to the Philippines if it's ever attacked, “then we'll meet them head on. We won't allow being put through another century of humiliation, even if it means killing Americans.”
Now bloggers are posting possible conflict triggers and resolution scenarios to mainstream blog portals, not just the regulars at the usual nationalistic niche online communities. On his Phoenix blog, Shi Weisong writes that as the number of disputed territories grows, China needs to start getting proactive in finding ways to prevent a crisis. Military presence needs to be strengthened, he writes, and military and economic means need to be used to rope in neighboring countries and keep them from leading the US on.
North Korea can keep keep South Korea distracted and be used as leverage against the United States and, similarly, movement toward reunification with Taiwan will take away America's advantage. As for the South China Sea, Shi writes, we need to find an opportunity to strike as well as an appropriate opponent, a role which suits the Philippines.
美国力量进入东亚地区是不可避免的，也是无法避免的。中国如何与美博弈，保障自身利益与战略空间，特别是周边国家借此翻江倒浪，将是中国无法躲避的问题。