China has no real allies, China has no friends, China is isolated, China is isolationist, the list goes on.
True or False?
On the surface, it certainly seems true, but, have people been asking the wrong question? The question should be, does China have any enemies? And what are our priorities?
The answer? No.
That's a controversial statement to say China has no enemies, but if you are to look deeper, China really has no enemies.
First, people would point to Japan, what people forget is Japan's real objective. Shinzo Abe was not elected to declare war on China, or go to war at all. He's elected based on Abenomics, he may appeal to the crazy nationalists, but they are only the minority and it is the majority that wants a revived economy that he needs to worry about.
Abe must reconstruct Japan's economy, even if he doesn't do it through China, he at least can't add to the problem by excluding China. Japan has as much at stake in China as Chinese do, I trust him more than I trust our own people in not starting a war, in that sense.
Next we move on to ASEAN, ASEAN is a different beast, it's too weak to be considered an enemy, regardless of their intentions, which most is good. It is only Vietnam and Philippines that is making the noise, and considering we launched 80% of Vietnamese navy's tonnage in one day and 800% of the Philippines, they would not qualify as enemies.
We have good friends in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Singapore, and good relations with Malaysia, Indonesia, that's most of ASEAN right there.
There is no way that they would fire the first shot, unless something goes seriously wrong, and on the off chance that they do, we can brush them aside with ease.
Taiwan is even simpler, 8 years of DPP, Taiwan independence party, no independence, they controlled the government at that time. Yet here we are, they don't dare fire the first shot and we don't want a pile of rubble we are going to have to rebuild with our money.
We move on to South Asia, this is even simpler, China Pakistan, anything else? Seriously though, China has made great advances in South Asia with all the nations, even India, which counts China as a major trading partner.
In terms of India, if Modi is even half interested in his economic policies, he won't start anything. Economic restructuring, political reforms, he's going to need all the political capital he has, and he doesn't want to waste it on things that may or may not benefit him economically. With the dominance of Congress over the decades, he has a short window, one maybe two terms to show what he's worth.
He may make statements, but if he's who he say he is, he's not going to do anything concrete, especially considering he's counting on Chinese money as part of his plan too, there's no reason to make his task harder than it already is.
Lastly, what's China's intention? China is going through massive reforms, the most radical of which hasn't happened yet, we are trying to minimize the blow back from the economic downturn, spending billions on a meaningless adventure, spending political capital on things that will have the opposite effect on internal stability regardless of result is not Xi's style, or the Chinese style.
It should be obvious to all those that follow China seriously, that the most reforms are again coming from China itself, Xi is turning China upside down to make way for a new China.
He has proven to be a decisive and effective leader, looking at the anti corruption campaign, if he actually wants to make a move, he would have made it. Instead of the little stand off that nobody really cares about.
All in all, does China need any allies? At this point, no, it be counter productive, it would drag us into things that we otherwise don't want to be involved in and potentially derail reforms, which is far more important to Chinese, the leadership and the world economy as a whole.
While on the other side of the fence, who really wants to go at it with a great power for gains no more than a few rocks and deserts. Especially with the world the way it is.
