LOS ANGELES — Sometimes truly strange things happen in life. For those of us on America's West Coast, who would have thought that Jerry Brown would become governor of California again? His first time out as our chief state executive (in his 30s, and full of rather unconventional ideas), they called him "Governor Moonbeam." This was not meant as a compliment. The Brown precedent suggests: Don't be surprised by a surprise. Here is our short list of possible unexpected developments. Don't be surprised if:
• China is actually in serious trouble: This amazing economic success story has been flying along for two decades now like the proverbial phoenix from the ashes. But its first serious midcourse atmospheric disturbance is long overdue. Almost nothing else (save a power grab by the huge People's Liberation Army) can explain the extreme uptightness and excessive crackdowns, the government's ugly response to a jailed dissident writer receiving the country's first ever Nobel Prize, and the testosterone pushiness of its military in the surrounding high seas. This is a country — we say here, though regretfully — that suddenly seems to be in trouble.
• Japan won't take too much more of China pushing it around: The Japanese public was appalled by the government's recent cave-in to Beijing on the Senkaku Islands crisis.