In Newsweek, Joshua Kurlantzick writes about shifting dynamics in Asia as China takes a more aggressive stance in its foreign policy:
China has reopened old wounds with India by publicly raising its claims to territory in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which triggered a troop buildup by both countries along the border. Beijing has proclaimed the South China Sea to be a “core national interest,” a term previously used for Taiwan and Tibet (among other places) to signal that Beijing will brook no outside criticism of its claims to a wide swath of the sea, which has strategic value as well as potential oil wealth. Increasingly, the Chinese Navy has harassed American and Japanese vessels sailing in Asian waters. And Beijing has largely stonewalled complaints by countries in mainland Southeast Asia that new Chinese dams on the upper portions of the Mekong River are diverting water and hurting the livelihood of downstream fishermen and farmers. China also has harshly condemned joint U.S.-South Korean naval exercises, and applied growing pressure on Southeast Asian nations to jettison even their informal relations with Taiwan, which once had extremely close ties to countries like Singapore and the Philippines.
China’s aggressive behavior represents a sea change in longstanding Chinese policy. Deng Xiaoping used to urge Chinese leaders to keep a low public profile in foreign affairs. During the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s Beijing launched a charm offensive toward its neighbors, who still remembered the revolutionary, interventionist China of Mao Zedong’s years, when it backed the genocidal Khmer Rouge and insurgents in Burma, among other causes. This softly-softly approach reaped rewards.
