Between the Liu Xiaobo, his wife, and the Nobel issues, its increasingly aggressive stance in US military talks, its now clearly-visible use of de facto economic sanctions (let alone their petty sanctions, like canceling concerts and tourism) to solve political issues (e.g., Senkakus; coming up next will be the South China Sea), its claim of the
entire South China Sea as a "core interest", its generals violent, angry, disrespectful rants to US diplomats and US military generals during talks, its ambassadors literally screaming at US ambassador about Taiwan arms sales (as if they're anything new?), its siding with North Korea in the Cheonan sub incident, its often-siding with Iran even as Russia goes against Iran, its harassment of
all regional neighbors (Japan, India, and all of ASEAN... find one country near China that doesn't border issues with China, more often than not
severe border issues), its very "coincidental" purchase of tons of Japanese bonds just as Japan was trying to weaken the yen, its reactor sales to Pakistan, its excessively predatory trade practices (you're a high-tech company that wants to do business in China? You'd better be willing to give domestic Chinese companies your technology), its industrial espionage (Everyone spies on everyone, but the CIA does not spy on Japan and give Ford technology secrets. China doesn't have this moral dilemma, however), its threatening maneuvers, war games, and military actions against regional powers (especially US, South Korea, and Japan), its dishonest military practices (this seems like a weird thing to say, but China literally has fleets
militarized civilian fishing boats [strategycenter.net] so that it can claim that innocent citizens are being targeted if there is an armed conflict. I'm pretty sure the Western Powers don't do this. This is another reason Tokyo takes the fishing inside of its borders so seriously.)... Between all of these issues and so many more, China
has already crossed the tipping point.
- The government of Japan is using all of its spare budget for this year to invest in rare earth metal mines in Mongolia and abroad while Japanese companies are pumping R&D money into negating the need for rare earth metals at all. The United States is also pushing to restart its rare earth mining operations.
- The Japanese Self Defense Forces has asked for a budget to study the possibility of setting up a permanent base on Yonakuni island -- an island 100 km from Taiwan. And, of course, where there are Japanese forces, there are inevitably US forces.
- The Japanese and US military are staging some war games to simulate a hostile Chinese military takeover of the Senkaku Islands so that they can prepare strategies to take the islands back by force.
- ASEAN has de facto agreed to begin setting up a bloc to contain and push back against increasingly aggressive and greedy Chinese hegemony and demands in the region. They are also asking the US to come back into this and re-assert its power in Asia. This has led to some very unusual alliances (US-Vietnam military alliance? wtf?). Because of China's aggressiveness, quite literally every rising or current Asian country (except China, of course), is gravitating back towards the US geopolitical sphere of influence.
- The Taiwanese public can only handle so much of their national image and sovereignty eroded and humiliated before they expect China to actually do something (like remove the 1500+ missiles aimed at their homes), and that tipping point is rapidly approaching (President Ma's popularity is tanking like Bush's was).
- The US is being increasingly aggressive against the Chinese yuan and their many, many, many other predatory and unfair trading practices (though to be fair to China on this one, the US's demands of an immediate yuan revaluing of +25% would be insanely destabilizing; I assume the US just set the bar high to give room to bargain downwards).
- India-China relations are degrading quite a lot, and unlike China, most all of the world superpowers have great relations with India, and India with them. In a spat between India and China, most will side with India.
Modern China has betrayed the advice of its own influential Deng Xiaoping that it should seek to engage the world peacefully, calmly, and with respect, as that's the way to get business deals in your favor and gain true political power. Some people shrug the recent Asian developments off and say that China is being increasingly aggressive because nobody wants to look weak with the upcoming party elections in 2012, but the fact is that China's actions have already caused irreparable damage to its image; damage that has undone decades of efforts by patient Chinese politicians and diplomats. Things don't change overnight, but the whole world is slowly turning against China. This is not the world teaming up to contain China; China is containing itself. Its 30 years of "smile diplomacy" and "panda diplomacy" image have been almost completely eradicated by all but the most optimistic and naive of countries. Now that China has amassed sufficient hard power, it attempts to wield that hard power over other countries; the rest of the world now sees the kind of leader that China will become, and they do not like it.
They have already crossed that line (Score:4, Interesting)