POREG VIEW: China is no longer an enigma like in the eighties and nineties when it tried to impress its neighbours with good behaviour. Now it wants the neighbours to put on good behaviour. And on its terms as the escalating stand off with Japan shows.

The genesis of the latest trouble in a fishing expedition by a Chinese trawler in the disputed East China Sea waters on September 8. The trawler collided with a Japanese patrol vessel and this led to the arrest of Captain Zhan Qixiong (41) and his crew members by the Japanese coast guard.  Though the crew and the trawler have since been released, the captain is held under extended detention.

Such arrests and prosecution are normal amongst littoral states but China has turned the routine incident into a diplomatic row with Japan. Going by media reports, Beijing is determined not to let Tokyo to sleep peacefully. This is clear from the mass cancellations of trips to Japan by Chinese tourists and protests in front of Japanese diplomatic missions and schools in China. Beijing suspended the negotiations on expanding aviation routes and cooperation on coal.

To say that China is flexing its muscles and is trying to brow beat Japan is to say the most obvious. But it doesn’t provide a rational explanation to what from all appearances is a maverick action aimed at securing Zhan Qixiong’s release.  Also the bad blood dating back to the period of Japan’s brutal military occupation. More over China has developed deep economic relations with Japan as also other countries like India, and Vietnam with which it often gets engaged in a war of words these days. So the upping the ante, which has become a regular feature of China foreign policy, is with a purpose.

Now what is the purpose? One China is arriving as the defacto super power.  Second China will not countenance any open challenge. The message read in conjunction with Chinese economic and trade diplomacy that worries not with the ideological and moorings of its borrowers bring into focus the contours of a new hegemony.  What the aggrieved neighbour should do? Neither grieving nor protesting is the answer. Quietly assert its core market strength to be counted and courted.