No country has more neighbours than China, with 14 land borders. They are a difficult group to get along with under any circumstances, but China’s flawed diplomacy is making the task even harder. Read why:
more neighbours than China, with 14 land borders. And its neighbourhood is not just crowded, but also tumultuous. There is a rogue state, North Korea; war-torn ones, such as Myanmar; ones with which it has festering territorial disputes, such as India; others with which it has overlapping maritime claims, such as Japan; and one—Taiwan—which it is constantly threatening to invade.
Powerful countries often try to enhance their own prosperity and security by dominating their region in economic, military, political and cultural terms. In the modern era France, Germany, Japan and Russia have all sought local hegemony by force, with devastating consequences. The European Union has expanded peacefully, but remains a marginal power on defence and security. Only America has managed to dominate its region for a long time.
Chinese officials deny seeking regional hegemony. In their telling, China wants only to reclaim its rightful borders, not to expand them or dominate neighbours. They blame America for frustrating Chinese ambitions. “Western countries—led by the—have implemented all-round containment, encirclement and suppression against us,” Mr Xi complained in a speech in March.
Those gains have come at a cost, however, by alarming China’s neighbours. Japan adopted a new security strategy in December which pledged a doubling of defence spending by 2027 and a new counterstrike capability, moving away from the pacifist principles it has embraced since the second world war. Japan is also co-ordinating more closely on defence with America, including over Taiwan, and stepping up security co-operation with American allies and other Chinese neighbours.
India is another neighbour reassessing ties following a series of clashes with China on their disputed Himalayan frontier over the past four years, one of which killed at least 20 Indian troops and four from China. That was among the deadliest such skirmishes since China won a brief border war in 1962. Bilateral trade has continued to grow , but India has limited investment from China, banned dozens of Chinese apps and launched tax raids on several Chinese firms.
But trade with China is lopsided: it sells more to its neighbours than it buys from them. They, in turn, sell more to America and thecombined than they do to China . What is more, China has an unsettling habit of using its economic clout to punish neighbours that rile it. That, too, did not start with Mr Xi. An early example came in 2010, when China banned exports of rare-earth minerals to Japan after a clash in the East China Sea. In office, however, Mr Xi has expanded the practice.
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