Mr. Hu's Neighborhood. (First Part) |History: The Roadmap to the Future--Asia

The day isn't so wonderful in this neighborhood. While much of the world watches the rise of China, few nations are monitoring the ascendancy of China as closely as that country's nearest neighboring countries, the states with the most to lose should a superpower China suddenly turn from generally peaceful to openly hostile to foreign states.

From Japan to Timor, to Mongolia and Burma (and including Tibet and East Turkmenistan/Xinjiang), China's regional neighbors have long experience with dealing with the Middle Kingdom, although for some nations--such as those in the Malay Archipelago--this experience has been diluted by almost a half millennium of Western influence pushing out native pre-Western history and culture. These are nations which have dealt with China for around a millennium or more. And these are the nations, far more than those in the West, Middle East, or Africa, that can most accurately 'read' the actions of the giant in their part of the globe.

It is hard to downplay China's impact in the region's cultural development. Japan, a country which throughout its history was not a part of the Han Chinese Empire, still adopted Chinese characters in its writing system (referred to as kanji in Japanese), and many cultural traits deemed as 'Japanese' in the West are of Chinese origin (for instance, bonsai trees). The pre-Spanish Philippines, largely outside of the Chinese sphere of influence--South East Asia was primarily under the Indic (Indian) sphere of influence--still adopted much from southeastern Chinese cuisine, and Tagalog contains many loanwords from the Hakka (or Fukkian/Fujian) Chinese dialect. And, of course, Korea and Vietnam were both vassal states of China, occasionally considered part of China itself, much the way Tibet and East Turkmenistan are today.

It is Japan that has the most to lose economically and politically from an ascendant China. The second largest economy on Earth, and for over a century the dominant power native to Asia, Tokyo's geopolitical influence is today being challenged by Beijing. In future, China is set to eclipse Japan. Japan, with a decreasing and rapidly aging population and stagnant economic growth, simply will be hard-pressed to compete with China. Militarily, Japan currently has one of the most advanced militaries in the world, but China is speedily catching up in this field, too--in part due to stealing technologies from more advanced nations.

And if Japan is about to become a minnow in a pond where it was the big fish, then what about smaller and less developed states?
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