Since the Diaoyu or Senkaku Islands dispute between China and Japan reemerged last year, there’s been a tendency to identify the United States as the main beneficiary of it. The thinking is as follows: the dispute strengthens the alliance between Japan and the United States at the expense of the Sino-Japanese bilateral relationship, worsens China’s external security outlook and provides an excuse for the deployment of American armed forces to East Asia which help encircle China. As a result, China’s economic development is hampered and the stability of Communist Party rule may be threatened.

However, if the Sino-American relationship is studied at large, the impact of the islands dispute put in a global perspective and the rise of Japan’s nationalist right taken into account, the odds may not be in the United States’ favor at all. (more…)