The rest of Asia is not nearly so ready to throw stones at China, however. Many would dispute whether China is, in fact, a big bully. The reality, however, is that China is the biggest kid on the block and getting bigger at a very fast rate. The Mainland is therefore a giant that the rest of Asia has to live with and, from Asia s perspective, there is little to be gained and much potentially to be lost from adopting too blatant a confrontational approach to China. Virtually every government in the region, from Taipei to Tokyo and from Jakarta to Seoul, falls into this category of favoring some form of engagement with China but in a manner that protects their own autonomy.
China is both the opportunity and the threat on their doorstep.
There are bound to be tensions on everything from physical territory to ideas and culture. However, there is also a growing interdependency that has to be recognized. As China showed with its recent handling of a high-ranking North Korean defector, it needed to request a favor from the Philippines to negotiate a peaceful diplomatic solution to this problem. And if China has any hope of keeping Hong Kong flying high as an international trading and financial center after the transition, it will have to maintain the confidence of the critical mass of overseas Chinese who have made Hong Kong what it is today. Such confidence would be severely damaged if China plays too heavy a hand.