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Originally Posted by Urzu 7
I'm not sure I followed this part. The PLA could be purposefully trying to create more unrest in China/in the region? CPC stoked the flames of anti-Japanese sentiments and the PLA wants to stoke them further? I guess I'm having a hard time understanding that paragraph since I only know so much about the CPC and the PLA.
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I'm sure you already got it [the edit thing], but anyway:
The People's Liberation Army is traditionally and even formally under the control of the Communist Party of China, partly because the CPC's first generation, themselves military commanders who fought the warlords of China's turbulent warlord period and the Kuomintang in the Civil War, knew full well the potential power of the "gun" and the danger of military coups. They subordinated it into a tool of the Party and State and largely kept it under control -- a situation that continues today.
Increasingly, however, high-ranking PLA officers are starting to grow in influence within the CPC itself as the Party experienced turmoil. This alarmed some factions, while others found willing allies. Details here in the West are scarce because the Party likes to keep those kinds of factional struggles under wraps and far and away from Western media. The most obvious evidences are usually official publications of the CPC and the PLA, those military magazine thingies where military writers published opinion articles we also have in the US.
Being, of course, that the job of a modern military is to draw up contingency plans for everything, like war with the Americans or a scuffle with the JMSDF, it's natural for some to start feeling like those contingency plans could actually work, not to mention seeing all those tanks,
their tanks, tend to give one a sense of...dominance, there seem to be opinions among the ranks of the PLA's officer corps that China's increasingly powerful military ought to be leveraged in various diplomatic disputes in increasingly bold ways. Not outright war, mind you, but Endless Soul's link to article about a senior advisor suggesting economic sanction against Japan reveals this growing attitude of confidence.
It is unfortunately the kind of confidence that is not very good for anybody's health. A Chinese economic war on Japan seem sensible to the mind that view Japan only as an enemy to be contained and defeated, but it is actually mutual suicide for both, because despite all the nationalistic hatreds both nations are very major trade partners. Cut off all that activity and a major chunk of Asian, if not global trade, is likewise cut off. Moreover, these recent tensions are undoing a previous and continuing effort of the People's Republic to promote its rise as peaceful, inevitable, and good for everyone in Asia. Maybe in the past the citizens of many Southeast Asian nations would agree, or at least would
like to agree if only because Chinese business is good business, but now with nationalistic attitudes flaring over the little islands and the fossil fuels under them, well...
I would hate to see the tension flares up anymore. Despite everything, Japan is still the world's third largest economy with a hundred million people, extremely capable technological sectors, and a "Self-Defense Force" that outclasses most nations' militaries. It is fully capable of rearming itself dramatically and provoke a dangerous new arms race if it fears China enough. And on a more personal level, I share the hope of a sizable portion of the Japanese citizenry who, perhaps overly optimistically, holds on dearly to the
Article 9 of their Constitution as a symbol that their nation has singularly renounced war as a tool of the state, a tool of humanity. They stand opposed to the ultranationalists who believe Japan's wings have been clipped by the Article 9, and a Japan that believes it is under an existential crisis from China will surrender to the other opinion, abandon this limitation, this talisman of peace, and it will send a stark message of what kind of world the 21st century is to become.
Oh, and don't worry about the rep thing.
I myself really should give out more before I deserve any.