Asian Nationalism at Sea
East Asia's maritime disputes both reflect and reinforce a dramatic rise in extreme nationalism in China, Japan, and elsewhere. It is time for all countries in the region to remember Winston Churchill’s famous advice: “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.”
CAMBRIDGE – Will war break out in the seas of East Asia? After Chinese and Japanese nationalists staged competing occupations of the barren landmasses that China refers to as the Diaoyu Islands and Japan calls the Senkaku Islands, angry demonstrators in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu chanted, “We must kill all Japanese.”