Robert Farley writes:
Over the past two weeks, Indian media has reported several border incursions along the two states’ disputed Himalayan border . While the Indian government has downplayed the incidents, Indian strategic commentators have suggested that China is moving to leverage its logistical advantages in the region.
At nearly the same time, China has upped the ante with respect to the Senkaku/Diaoyus…..
Read more at Is China Carelessly Overextending Itself? | Flashpoints.
Ian Johnson highlights how China’s strategic blunders have painted it into a corner:
Just as [Pre WW I] Wilhelminian Germany should surely have seen that building a blue-water navy would cause Britain to form alliances against it, so too should China understand that demanding control over islands far from its shores but close to its neighbors’ would cause a backlash. (Here one thinks not so much of the Senkaku/Diaoyus but of the shoals, reefs, and islets in the South China Sea.) Even the battle for the Senkaku/Diaoyus seems to have no satisfactory endgame for China except a permanent state of tension with its most important neighbor.
……..today the country’s tactics have left it surrounded by suspicious and increasingly hostile countries; indeed, it’s probably no exaggeration to say that China has no real allies.
Read more at Will the Chinese Be Supreme? by Ian Johnson | The New York Review of Books.
