Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe issued a siren call at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos that the world must stand up to an increasingly assertive China. Will this resonate with the broader international community, especially the business fraternity which has made strong inroads into Chinese society?

SINO-JAPANESE ties, strained by territorial and historical disputes, took a further beating the past week after a speech by Japanese PM Shinzo Abe at the World Economic Forum in Davos in which he called on the global community to stand up to an increasingly assertive China.

Likening Sino-Japanese rivalry to that between Britain and Germany before World War I, Abe warned that Chinese military expansion, if unchecked, could have grave consequences for the world. Not surprisingly, these remarks received a sharp rebuke from Beijing calling Japan the “Nazis of the East” deliberately skirting the issue of its wartime past.

… Benjamin Ho is an Associate Research Fellow in the Multilateralism and Regionalism Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS)