A Chinese surveillance ship (front) gets close to a Japanese coast guard vessel. Reuters
Playing Chicken In The East China Sea -- Mchael Auslin, Wall Street Journal
Nationalist passions in both China and Japan increase the risk of confrontation.
Over the past two weeks, one of the largest naval standoffs in recent years played out between China and Japan. Off the disputed Senkaku Islands (called Diaoyu in China), up to 20 Chinese maritime surveillance vessels were shadowed by 50 Japanese Coast Guard cutters, as the Japanese waited tensely for a reported 1,000-ship fishing flotilla to arrive from China. Although the private armada never materialized, this is the latest in a string of face-offs that increase the likelihood that confrontation will erupt, due as much to chance as to calculation.
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My comment: I concur with this Reuters assessment that war will not be the result from this confrontation .... but it is also true that the bitterness of the Second World War still exists in Asia .... and no one is willing to forget, atone, or forgive for what happened 70 years ago.
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