J. Michael Cole writes:
Ian Bremmer, founder and president of the geopolitical consulting firm Eurasia Group, told CNN this week that, “The danger of China-Japan conflict in 2013, for me, is the single biggest geopolitical tension that is underappreciated right now and one we’re going to have watch very carefully.”
Read more at Japan, China Scramble Military Jets in East China Sea.
By JANE PERLEZ
Notions of punishing Tokyo economically for buying the islands, whose status was left unclear after World War II, are unrealistic, said Hu Shuli, editor in chief of Caixin Media and one of China’s chief economic journalists. So many Chinese workers are employed at Japanese-owned companies, she said, that any escalation of tensions leading to a boycott of Japanese goods could lead to huge job losses.
This would be disastrous in an already shaky Chinese economy, Ms. Hu wrote in the Chinese magazine Century Weekly……
via China Alters Its Strategy in Dispute With Japan – NYTimes.com.
BY STEPHANIE KLEINE-AHLBRANDT
The wave of anti-Japanese protests that swept across dozens of cities in China this weekend, prompted by Tokyo’s purchase of three disputed islands, has obscured a potentially more worrying development that risks drawing the two countries into a larger conflict: China’s adoption of a legal framework empowering it to expel foreign vessels in disputed waters in the East China Sea.
……More frequent Chinese patrols in the area, along with the Japanese Coast Guard continuing to patrol near the islands, raises the risk of maritime clashes higher than it has ever been. Although the two countries have dealt with past run-ins — such as when the Japanese Coast Guard arrested a Chinese skipper in 2010 after his boat collided with a Japanese vessel — and succeeded in cooling tensions, the current situation is of a different order. That act could be attributed to an overzealous Chinese fisherman. But now, a skirmish between official law enforcement vessels in the current context could prove irresolvable.
via Dangerous Waters – By Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt | Foreign Policy.
