Uh oh.

There really isn’t a better way to respond to Toshi Yoshihara’s troubling new study of Chinese views of Japanese seapower and the shifting balance of power between Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force and China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). This transition has profound implications not only for the defense of Japan but regional stability as well, given the vital role that Japanese maritime superiority has played in assuring U.S. military dominance in the Asia Pacific.

“Dragon against the Sun: Chinese Views of Japanese Seapower” is the latest in Yoshihara’s long line of work on maritime security in Asia. A senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis (CSBA, which published the study last month), he taught strategy for over a decade at the Naval War College and has written some of the definitive works on Chinese naval policy. In other words, his conclusions are not to be taken lightly.