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What makes the situation even worse is that the PRC and Japanese governments are playing into each others hands. The ongoing conflict is a welcome distraction f
by ninjin 13y ago
What makes the situation even worse is that the PRC and Japanese governments are playing into each others hands. The ongoing conflict is a welcome distraction from the fact that both countries have an enormous need for domestic structural reform.
- yapcguy 13y agoAbe wants an international incident so he can beat the drums of war and convince the people that Japan's self-defence force must be allowed to become a full military force again.
- tsotha 13y agoThat may be all be true, but I still don't see how it's in China's interest to get into an arms race with Japan. The Japanese have pretty much run the limits of the "construction state", and are looking for public sector projects to employ people. China, on the other hand, has plenty of private sector jobs for the technically inclined. In the long term a powerful military must be backed by a powerful economy, so to the extent the Chinese are setting aside economic growth to militarize they're delaying future supremacy. And it especially doesn't make sense for Beijing to goad the Japanese into deploying nukes and long range missiles. There just isn't any scenario where that's beneficial to China's long term interests, and the Japanese public wouldn't tolerate a domestic nuclear weapons capability in the absence of Chinese bullying.