Time for Japan to stop blaming China

Given on Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's remarks on South China Sea disputes during the gathering of G20 leaders in Turkey, he is highly likely to raise the issue again at the forthcoming APEC meeting and East Asia summit, emphasizing freedom of navigation and indirectly targeting China's reclamation projects. But as an outsider to the disputes in the South China Sea, Japan will only expose the absurdity of its stance if Abe raises the issue.

Hopefully, Abe will refrain from taking such a ridiculous step, because it will be good neither for Japan nor regional stability. In fact, for quite sometime now, some Japanese politicians have been saying that China - because of its economic slowdown, increased military budgets and lack of military transparency - has been exporting deflation to and destabilizing the Asia-Pacific region. The truth, however, is that the South China Sea disputes are just another card that Abe is trying to use to hype the "China threat" theory.

China's rapid economic growth, which made it overtake Japan as the world's second-largest economy in the world, is the main cause of worry for Japan. China's rise has fundamentally changed the geopolitical pattern of the Asia-Pacific. As a result, Japan has lost much of its influence on regional economic development and its leaders have lost their psychological balance.