Growing Strategic Rivalry Among East Asia's Great Powers-Implications for Southeast Asia and the South China Sea
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Recent events in the East China Sea and the South China Sea portend that things are bound to get worse before they get better, with respect to the territorial and maritime resource disputes between China and various regional states.

China’s November 23, 2013 declaration of an Air Defense Indentification Zone on the East China Sea, overlapping an area of the Diaoyutai/Senkakus disputed with Japan, has rankled its neighbors, principally Japan and South Korea.  It has pushed these countries as well as the United States and Australia to challenge the new rules Beijing imposed, by flying into the declared ADIZ without reporting their flight plan to China or taking unusual steps to identify themselves. In China’s defense, Chinese sources argue that countries have the right to declare ADIZ – as Japan itself declared one in the same area over forty years ago and that the US and about twenty other countries have several such zones that other states respect — and that moreover the move was defensive and in response to Japanese politicians’  threat to shoot down Chinese drones flying over Japanese airspace.