Beijing isn’t looking to rock the boat, so to speak, but with the U.S. still fighting a decade long war there’s no way Washington would get the domestic political support to attack China over a military build up. Broad international support would also be lacking, not only because the rest of the world is experiencing its own economic hardships, but also because their relationship with China is almost as vital to them as their relationship with the U.S. Add to that our severe deficits and the economic crisis, and there’s very little we can do to stop them from boldly expanding however they want.

On the other hand, it seems to me that someone could have written a very similar article about the expansion of the Japanese navy in the early 1930s. In fact, the case would have been even easier to make, in that Japan had at that time a more tangible history of international navsal cooperation (with the Allies in WWI), and was nominally complying with international naval arms control treaties (which don’t even exist today). Let’s hope the optimism expressed here is not similarly misplaced.

As for the South China Sea, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines, and even Taiwan all claim part of, or, all of the Spratlys. So it’s not just China alone you know… And you seriously think the rest of the claimants would actually cosy up with each other? I am sure the Taiwanese don’t mind the PRC taking the lead in protesting Japanese claims over the Diaoyutai. Just go to their Coast Guard website and you will see that the Taiwanese quite vehemently state that the islands are an inalienable part of China (ok, in their case the ROC).

Also, businesses just don’t have that much of a choice of leaving China for other countries that you mentioned because the latter just don’t have the infrastructure and full business cycle to support that kind of investment or manufacturing base. After all, China is already the ‘factory of the world’? Who on earth would really want to pay US$800 for an I-phone these days? Get real, manufacturing has all but left the US. Thanks to ‘quantitative easing’, the Americans are effectively saying that it’s ok for them to devalue the Dollar but not the Chinese or anyone else for that matter. That’s a lot of nerve coming from the No.1 culprit who caused the Global Credit Crisis in 2008. Anyways, the Germans, French, even the Japanese(!) and Koreans and emerging economies at the G20 in Seoul aren’t buying Obama’s sales pitch. I read that the Germans are really pissed off with the Yanks in Reuters yesterday.

So Andrew, please get the background and historical context of the issues correct first before you champion the causes of so called ‘downtrodden’ countries. At least, I don’t see Chinese carrier battle groups roaming the seven seas or them forming ‘coalition of the willing’ looking for weapons of mass deception (sorry, I meant destruction)in other people’s countries…

So bullying its neighbours saying all the South China Sea is theirs and contesting oil and gas rich islands and waterways recognised under international law as being Vietnamese, Japanese and Korean, is peaceful is it?

Now they’re bullying the Norway government for the Nobel peace prize, which it has no control over. All of this is peaceful is it?

Chinese businessmen open fire on Kenyan protesters who are paid slave labour wages (according to the BBC) and the Chinese government does nothing and does not condemn their actions. This is a peaceful government is it? At the same time a sea-captain is arrested for ramming two Japanese vessels and all hell breaks loose.

Chinese citizens violently protest against Japan and all the government says is to protest rationally and within the law. Yet anyone protesting against the Chinese government is locked away or just disappears or is shot at from soliders or the police (Tienanmen Square).

These are the actions of a peaceful, cooperative government promoting mkutual understanding is it?

The Chinese government may control evrything in its own country down to the minute detail, but has to recognise it has no powers outside of its borders. If it doesn’t, and a lot of countries are getting a little pissed of with them now, they may just find businesses relocating to Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia, as is being discussed here in Europe. Then where will the Chinese growth be?

They proved that they can take out our satellites and cut off the communications between our fleets and home base.

They build missiles like we build cars, by the thousands but don’t advertise how many or what their max capabilities might be.

They are buying this new navy with our Walmart dollars, before the dollar becomes toilet paper, making our Walmart shoppers complicit in their plans.

They are getting ready for the day that the US slips and falls down that rabbit hole Alice visited…or maybe it has already.

Besides, they have economic interests on every continent and need to insure the safety of their supply lines, like any smart country does. The US will soon not be able to afford to patrol the whole world and they know it, as does any rational, thinking American.

However, China should learn from the mistakes of the Japanese during World War 2 and the collapse of the Soviet Union during the Cold War and adopt a peaceful, transparent and slow military buildup if it intends on so doing.

Japan’s aggressive use of its navy to expand its empire over-exhausted its resources and exposed long and vulnerable supply routes to harassment by US naval forces. The Soviet desire to catch up with the US military led to exhausting their economy on a fruitless arms race.

Finally, if the US wanted to invade China, they could have done it decades ago, and there would have been nothing China could do about it.

So if China is smart, they will play things quietly and coolly, and let Asia naturally fall into its orbit. And China should look at Open Skies and Open Waters treaties with the US in order to build trust so the US will be more accepting towards a Chinese military buildup of any sort.