Yes, China just wants us to shut up and go along with their slow conquest of the East China Sea and South China Sea. Nice work if you can get it, and all that.
But why is the Western media in a tizzy over Japan's decision to notice and react to China's sea, air, and land grab?
The international press, meanwhile, bemoaned Japan’s shot across the bow at China. The Economist opined that the reforms “heighten already acute tensions.” Even Asahi Shimbun, the liberal Japanese paper, fretted that conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s strategy “undermines Japan’s postwar pacifism.”
You have to love The Economist (Lord, I once--decades ago--prized my subscription to that magazine. What happened to them?). Never mind China's actual policies that caused the acute tensions.
Never mind that Japan's modest increases in defense spending and reorientation of their military more than two decades after the Soviet Union collapsed and during which time China's military capabilities have skyrocketed make perfect sense.
No, the real problem is that Japan noticed China and reacted. Japan heightened the tensions. Forfend! China won't like that one bit.
People are funny.
