A bridge over troubled waters

CHINA is a country that finds it strangely hard to get along with its East Asian neighbours, rubbing many of them up the wrong way with assertive territorial claims and other high-handedness. Yet political tensions obscure the region’s intense economic links, particularly the fact that an astonishing number of Chinese are employed on the mainland by East Asian firms.

At the latest count 88,000 firms from Taiwan employ 15.6m Chinese workers. About 11m are employed at 23,000 Japanese firms or their suppliers. Throw in 2m more workers for South Korean enterprises, and companies from around the troubled East China Sea have approaching 30m Chinese on their payrolls.