North Korea's recent nuclear test has once again focused world attention on a region fraught with 19th-century security concerns of aggression and territorial aggrandizement. The recent Group of 20 meeting in China, however, studiously avoided the greatest long-term threat to peace and security in the region — Chinese aggression in its maritime borders.
In the month leading up to the summit, China sent at least 36 ships — coast guard, marine surveillance, fisheries law enforcement command — into Japan's territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. Another 200 to 300 fishing vessels entered the contiguous zone.
In the South China Sea, a flotilla of Chinese barges and coast guard ships have sailed around the disputed Scarborough Shoal 220 km off the Philippines' coast. At this writing, China and Russia are conducting a combined exercise including seizing and defending islands. This ramped-up Chinese activity has stoked fears in Tokyo and Manila that China is positioning itself to change the status quo, such as occupy the features or, at a minimum, blockade them.