Intentional Trade is Amoral Dr Faust

Last month a Chinese trawler operating in Japanese-controlled waters collided with two vessels of Japan’s Coast Guard. Japan detained the trawler’s captain; China responded by cutting off Japan’s access to crucial raw materials.

And there was nowhere else to turn: China accounts for 97 percent of the world’s supply of rare earths, minerals that play an essential role in many high-technology products, including military equipment. Sure enough, Japan soon let the captain go.
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This from Paul Krugman New York Times
And
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Broadly, Beijing's naval modernisation is the understandable response of a vast trading power to anxiety about its vulnerable energy supplies. It was inconceivable that China would forever outsource sea-lane security to the US.

At this time of unprecedented Chinese naval power, modernisation and audacity, it is
troubling that diplomatic mechanisms for communication and preventing strife at sea remain weak to nonexistent.

This is as bad for China as it is for everyone else. The increasingly crowded maritime highways of the Indo-Pacific lack even the basic code that helped keep the Cold War cool. In the early 1970s, the Americans and Soviets crafted a detailed agreement and operating rules to stop incidents at sea from escalating to war. Today, no such understanding exists between China and the other powers its navy is increasingly brushing up against.

And while Beijing, New Delhi and Japan are finally talking about setting up leadership hotlines to help cope with their security tensions, there remains much confusion about how these might work in practice. Beijing and Tokyo cannot so far even agree if their proposed military hotline would simply give warning of defence exercises or serve to manage crises in real time.
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This is from Lowy Institute


This Chinees bully is not same as a little feeble bully boy in a school yard who can be easily scolded effectively deal with. It is real, eat or to be eaten. So utilitarian logic is amoral metamorphosed Goethe’s Faust, I say, O power, my super power my economic power I give you my heart and soul! There is always catch of course…

YSKW