By Shannon Tiezzi
China refuses to acknowledge that its neighbors might have legitimate reasons for concern.
By now, even causal Asia watchers know that the recent Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore got a little testy. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel warned about China’s provocations and lack of respect for international law. China’s representative, deputy chief of the PLA general staff Wang Guanzhong, fired back, accusing the U.S. and Japan of coordinating their remarks to smear China.
While the accusations and counter-accusations on display at Shangri-La were predictable, they can still be useful in understanding an underlying problem — namely, China’s “China threat” theory. This idea, which is alluded to by Chinese officials throughout the Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Defense, suggests that nefarious forces in the U.S. and Japan are hyping the “China threat” to achieve their own political goals.
In the case of U.S. politicians, the motivation is assumed to be positioning candidates to win the next election, as one post-Shangri-La Xinhua commentary mentioned. Another theory goes that the “China threat” is an excuse to help defense industry insiders keep the power and prestige they gained during the Cold War by creating a new existential threat supposedly facing the U.S. Meanwhile, Chinese analysts assume that Shinzo Abe and his supporters have manufactured the “China threat” so that they can proceed with their long-held dream of remilitarizing Japan.
Read the full story at The Diplomat