Is part of America’s ‘Asia Pivot’ to use China’s territorial disputes with Japan and the Philippines to gain leverage over Beijing? This editorial from China’s state-run Huanqiu exhorts Chinese officials not to be too polite with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who is now in China after stopping in Japan. According to the government mouthpiece, it must be made abundantly clear to Hagel that ‘China is not Russia’ – and will not have its strategic space squeezed the way the West Squeezed Moscow’s.
Showing quite an attitude at having China compared to Russia, the Huanqiu editorial says in part:
The United States is good at maneuvering in East Asia, but if it thought it could force China into submission both at sea and in the media, then it has overestimated the effectiveness of its “Asia Pivot.” China is not Russia, nor are the South China and East China Seas Crimea. Restraint is one of China’s central philosophies in the face of friction, but we must also make clear everyone, “Don’t mess with us!”
If the United States continues to encourage Tokyo and Manila, causing them to provoke China, it will sooner or later have to pay the price, and that price will be shame. For instance, if the Philippines insists on reinforcing a rusting ship in Ren’ai Reef, China will prevent it. To be sure, China will not allow the emergence of a permanent Philippine facility on that reef.
If U.S. Congress people promise Manila that the U.S. will enable it to achieve that dream, then those lawmakers will sooner or later have egg on their faces. If Washington has told Tokyo that it can have a free hand on the Diaoyu Islands, that promise will eventually be shown to have been worthless.
China has nothing to learn from Russia when it comes to dealing with friction on its periphery. Rather, it is the U.S. that needs to learn a lesson from the Crimea situation. Washington has squeezed Russia’s strategic space, but it got cold feet when Moscow upped the ante. From the point of view of great power relations, that is the essence of the Crimea incident.
Conflicts in Europe are not being replicated in East Asia. America needs to take care, because it will be unable to suppress China the way it has done with Russia. The U.S. will be unable to use countries like Japan and the Philippines as pawns in a China containment strategy.
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