While the Japanese government is facing pressure from the Tokyo Metropolitan government, Ishigaki municipal assembly and the main opposition LDP to nationalise the Senkaku Islands, a section of Japanese people have been asking it not to provoke China.

The summit ended with the hope of increased cooperation in East Asia, bolstered popular support for Sino-Japanese friendship, and set out a strategy for maintaining regional peace, stability and prosperity.

China’s conduct on the Chunxiao issue indicates that it may go ahead with plans regardless of a pending dispute when a vital strategic goal has to be achieved.

The relationship between China and Japan has taken a positive turn in the wake of Japan’s national disaster.

The conflict over rare earths is not only a consequence of the monopoly amassed by China but is also reflective of the current flux in global power hierarchies.

Would China’s strategic error in inviting Japanese hostility place more blocks to its rise as an unchallenged regional power or would it be able to override the Japanese threat in ample measure by altering its strategic game and finding a meeting ground with the United States?

Japan’s adoption of a new defence Guidelines to secure its southern “outlaying islands” closer to China suggests major shift in Japan’s Cold War security policy.