A dispute over islands in the East China Sea has inflamed relations between Japan and China for the last two years – but they were tense even before. The BBC’s Mariko Oi visited both countries with a Chinese journalist to find out why the wounds of World War Two refuse to heal. “Do you feel […]
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry travels to Asia this week for talks with Chinese and South Korean officials. But he will not be visiting Japan, which is moving closer to Russia and India amid uncertain relations with Washington. Japanese paratroopers are training to defend disputed islands in the East China Sea, as China increases […]
The Philippines and China appeared to have found a common ground in taking issue against the commander of the United States air forces in the Pacific, who over the past few days, had criticized both Beijing and Manila on matters related to the territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Malacañang shrugged off a statement […]
The diplomatic standoff between China and Japan is drifting in the direction of military conflict. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2014, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made an explicit analogy between the current Sino-Japanese rivalry and what had happened between Great Britain and Germany before World War I. A coming conflict between China […]
Washington (AFP) – Secretary of State John Kerry vowed Friday that the United States would defend Japan against attack including over islands claimed by China as tensions boil between the Asian powers. Kerry, who said he would visit China next week, met in Washington with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and reaffirmed the 1960 treaty […]
WASHINGTON — The United States on Friday stressed its commitment to the defense of Japan and stability in the Asia-Pacific region against a backdrop of increasingly assertive territorial claims by China. After a meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, Secretary of State John Kerry emphasized the importance of the U.S.-Japan relationship, which both countries […]
The U.S. voiced concern Wednesday that China is gradually asserting control in the disputed South China Sea on the basis of vague territorial claims unsupported by international law. Sharpening U.S. criticism of the rising Asian power, Daniel Russel, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia, described in congressional testimony a litany of actions by China […]
According to this report, the recent decision by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to prosecute retired security tsar Zhou Yongkang’s son Zhou Bin for corruption is the “leading impetus” that has led to a fracturing of loyalties in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) between those advocating immediate strikes against Japan and those cautioning a more strategic […]
In response to reports by Japan’s Asahi Shimbun that a South China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) was imminent, following on the heels of the East China Sea ADIZ, China has accused Japan of spreading rumors. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei, in a press release quoted by Xinhua, said that “We sternly warned these forces not […]
The prominent realist international relations scholar John Mearsheimer says there is a greater possibility of the U.S. and China going to war in the future than there was of a Soviet-NATO general war during the Cold War. Mearsheimer made the comments at a lunch hosted by the Center for the National Interest in Washington, DC […]