HONG KONG — Is Beijing deliberately trying to intimidate and humiliate Japan and Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara, or are the Japanese merely collateral damage in China's wider ambitions to assert the political muscle of its new global economic aspirations?
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's visit to Kunashiri Island, part of the disputed Northern Territories (South Kuril Islands in Russia) was another leaf from Beijing's playbook in a stronger assertion of itself against a weak and weakening Japan.
It is high time for Japan to reconsider its changing place in the world in the light of the relentless rise of China. Its existing policy, which bears a close resemblance to a studied imitation of an ostrich burying its head in the sand, will no longer suffice.