Is Japan Trying to Contain China?

Ted Galen Carpenter, National Interest

Despite its extensive, multilayered economic relationship with China, the United States has moved gradually but inexorably over the past decade or so to put in place the building blocks of a policy to contain Chinese power...... U.S. officials are not even especially subtle in their courtship of Delhi as a possible ally against Beijing......Washington has even developed strategic ties with onetime outright enemy Vietnam......Tokyo was clearly backing the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in its South China Sea territorial disputes with China. Japan’s involvement in the South China Sea has since escalated on multiple fronts. Japanese ships will now join U.S. naval vessels in conducting so-called freedom of navigation patrols in that body of water—a move that has caused Beijing to issue a sharp denunciation.  Indeed, China objects even to Japanese diplomatic involvement in the South China Sea territorial disputes.........To Read More....