And China sees the US making friends and influencing people in the two other giants of the region, Japan and India. An alliance that will leave China with no safe rear area is being born.
So China has two ways of dealing with this. The tough way by trying to block Japan from getting a permanent Security Council seat:
About 1,000 people shouted "Boycott Japanese products!" and threw eggs, rocks, beer bottles and pieces of concrete as hundreds of police formed a human wall to keep them away from the embassy. Their projectiles smashed the windows of the guardhouse outside the fenced compound.
They marched to the embassy on Beijing's east side after a noisy rally by more than 6,000 people in the university district in the capital's northwest, where some burned a Japanese flag.
"China's economy needs to grow even bigger so Japan won't be able to push us around ever again," said protester Huang Liyi, 22, a chemist who learned about the rally on a Web site.
Others said advance word of the protest spread by e-mail and mobile phone text message.
Don't believe this is about textbooks or apologies. Those are pretexts to stop Japan from being recognized as a world power through a permanent Security Council seat. China knows that Japan will side with the US and so has no reason to go along. Whipping up the old ghosts serve the purposes of China just fine.
For India, which was in the Soviet camp in the Cold War, the Chinese think a charm offensive can head off the growing US-Indian friendship and eventual alliance:
The Chinese government attaches great importance to developing good relations and friendly cooperation with India," Wen said in a statement.
"Bearing in mind the larger picture (the Chinese government) will expand and deepen exchanges and cooperation in all areas and properly settle questions left over from history with a view to bring China and India ties to a new high," he said.
Sure, the Chinese can point out the US sale of F-16s to Pakistan; but we will sell better weaponry to India. And those nukes that Pakistan points at India are all due to China's stooge North Korea. The missiles owe a lot to China. I somehow think that the Chinese won't get very far. In time, there will be loud protests outside the Indian embassy in Peking, too.
China is in a bad strategic position and I wouldn't trade places with them for all the tea in China.
