The China threat: Theory or reality?

CHINA'S rapid growth and increasingly assertive behaviour are causing alarm in many parts of the world, but Beijing continues to ridicule what it calls "the China threat theory", telling the rest of the world that it has nothing to worry about.

But the way China is sending that message is in itself worrying. With Japan, for instance, Beijing is indicating that improved bilateral relations would only come about if the Japanese stopped considering China a possible threat.

The latest Japanese defence white paper, published last August, said that China, "while advocating 'peaceful development', continues to act in an assertive manner, including attempts at changing the status quo by coercion based on its own assertions incompatible with the existing international order". The official state newspaper China Daily responded that relations between the two countries could not improve if Japan regarded China as a threat and continued to hold military exercises with the United States.