The Chinese are miffed that the Philippines government went Godwin on the Middle Kingdom:
The Filipino and Chinese government are embroiled in a very public spat over Filipino accusations that China is behaving like the Nazis did before World War II, when Germany claimed ownership of all of Austria and parts of France, Poland and Czechoslovakia as part of “Greater Germany.” German aggression in pursuit of these claims, along with similar Japanese claims in East Asia, triggered World War II. China publically called this comparison amateurish, ignorant, lame, inconceivable, unreasonable and inaccurate. Unlike the Nazi and Japanese claims, China insists its assertion that it owns all the South China Sea, including reefs and islands less than a hundred kilometers from the Philippines (and over a thousand kilometers from China) are fair, reasonable and just.
See? China is way different from Nazi Germany. China's claims are fair, reasonable, and just.
The Nazi claim is a bit much. In reality, China is just being like historic China.
After more than a century of getting used to China's faltering power and the rise of Western power in the region to counter the Chinese, locals got used to the odd thaw in relations as China lost the power to intimidate smaller neighbors.
But in the last couple decades,China's military and economic power have risen. A lot. This has allowed China to start thinking about restarting that whole "Middle Kingdom" idea that neighbors are mere barbarians to submit to China's fair, reasonable, and just demands.
Having gotten used to not having to bow to Peking, China's insistence that this is the natural state of affairs is not going over well with said neighbors.
So the Philippines has to prepare to fight for its territory and maybe its independence depending on whether China discovers it should really own the Philippines too, and that it is now a core interest of China.
And the Philippines has to make sure South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, India, and others--especially America--are on board with making sure the bad old days don't return.
Heck, if North Korea and Iran are allowed to go fully nuclear, why shouldn't the Philippines have the same deterrence, Manila might think.
So yeah, China isn't behaving like the old Nazis as the Philippines claims. China is behaving like the old Chinese. So score one debating point for China, I suppose.
UPDATE: Thanks to Mad Minerva for the link. Although I think China's own history is a better analogy, I like to think Gowdin's Law really doesn't apply when discussing an aggressive dictatorship seeking to take the territory of small neighbors.
