From theage.com.au:
FOR years, American strategists tended to underestimate the challenge that China poses to America in Asia. They put their faith in what seemed a simple and foolproof mechanism. The more China’s power grew, they assumed, the more other Asian countries would come to fear it and welcome tough US action to counterbalance China and keep it in its box. This would impose a kind of automatic limit to China’s regional influence: as its military power grew, its political and diplomatic clout relative to the US would fall.
But it has not worked that way. During the past five years, as China’s military power has grown rapidly, its political and diplomatic influence has grown even faster. Beijing has mounted a sustained diplomatic offensive aimed precisely at easing regional fears of China’s growing power.
The success of this diplomacy has been startling. Helped, of course, by the immense gravitational pull of its economic boom,
Beijing has largely eliminated the negatives in its relationships with every country in the Western Pacific. Australia has been very much part of this pattern. The only exception ” though a crucial one ” is Japan. [Full Text]