AT A meeting of South-East Asian nations in 2010, China's foreign
minister Yang Jiechi, facing a barrage of complaints about his country's
behaviour in the region, blurted out the sort of thing polite leaders
usually prefer to leave unsaid. “China is a big country,” he pointed
out, “and other countries are small countries and that is just a fact...
NO MATTER how often China has emphasised the idea of a peaceful rise,
the pace and nature of its military modernisation inevitably cause
alarm. As America and the big European powers reduce their defence
spending, China looks likely to maintain the past decade's increases of
about 12% a year...