Blunt words and keen swords

DESPITE a third round of talks this week, China and Japan seem no closer to ending their stand-off over the tiny, uninhabited islands known to China as the Diaoyus and to Japan as the Senkakus. Indeed, the row seems to be intensifying. Chinese spokesmen are lining up to recall Japan’s shameful imperial past and to warn it to back off. Vessels from the two countries confront each other almost daily in waters near the islands. In the circumstances, it hardly helped that this week Japan and America started “Operation Keen Sword”, a regular naval drill involving 34,000 Japanese and 10,000 Americans in waters near the disputed islands. At least the exercise was changed so that it no longer includes a rehearsal for recapturing an invaded island.

The tension is in no country’s interests, least of all China’s. With the political uncertainty at home that a leadership transition brings, this is hardly the time to pick a fight with a neighbour. And although Japan suffers from Chinese consumer boycotts and informal commercial sanctions, China loses too, as Japanese investors and tourists take fright. The perception of Chinese bellicosity damages its interests elsewhere. South-East Asian countries whose claims in the South China Sea clash with China’s look at its behaviour farther north and raise military spending and strengthen their ties with America. And there is a small but real risk that the stand-off could result in a clash; that a clash could provoke a reprisal; and that tit-for-tat reprisals could become war.