China
Many of these new diplomatic battlegrounds – New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, the Philippines – loom large in national memories of the Second World War. The prospect of a potentially hostile power once again building air and naval bases on the islands and atolls of the region fills Australians in particular with unease. American allies, in Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines, have equal reason for concern. The view from Beijing – or from the Yulin naval base on Hainan island, the home of the Chinese navy – is quite different. “They look out at the Pacific, and they see tens of thousands of US military personnel in South Korea, tens more thousands in Japan. They see Taiwan, and they see America not faithfully living up to its commitment – from their point of view – to respect the status quo there,” says Philip Shetler-Jones, an expert on Indo-Pacific security at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a UK-based think-tank.
