Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)
Posted: 15 Nov 2017 11:06
Place Holder
Consortium of Indian Defence Websites
https://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/
Q: What is the outcome and take away from the two days of deliberations as part of GMC?
A: The most important outcome is everyone acknowledged the centrality and importance of the Indian Ocean as a key gateway to connect the East and the West and the dependence of the global economy on the sea lanes of communication. The key takeaways have been the coordination of efforts, we have identified common security threats across all countries and agreed on greater degree of coordination and information sharing to take things forward to provide maritime security and safety of the global commons of the Indian Ocean.[/b]
Q: What are the common threats identified and how do you plan to take forward it forward?
A: Common security threats identified are non-traditional threats in the form of maritime terrorism, unregulated fishing, illegal fishing in the global commons, pollution, at sea piracy, drug and human trafficking. We have also agreed on need to put in place a coordination mechanism. We already have architectures available with several island nations, we have coordinated patrols with a number of countries who are participating here. We have identified ways on how we can exchange information.
Q: Addressing the GMC, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman talked of extra-regional navies making permanent presence in the Indian Ocean. What do you have to say on it?
A: When you look at geo-strategic situation in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), what is happening on the ground is a fact of life. There is permanent presence of a large number of extra-regional navies in the IOR especially in the Northern Indian Ocean where at any given time there over 100 multilateral ships in the vicinity. We need to be cognizant of the fact that our presence in our areas of interest dove tail our deployment and surveillance missions so that we are aware what is happening.
Q: When you say coordinated patrols, are we looking at more countries coming in? What about countries like US and Japan?
A: We only do coordinated patrols and joint patrols with nations who are our maritime neighbours and we have requested us in the IOR. We are already doing it with Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand. We are doing Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) patrols for island nations of Maldives, Mauritius and Seychelles. We can look at increasing the frequency, increasing the assets which are deployed during the coordinated patrols. These are the avenues which are available.
We have been working with the US navy for a very long time. We have had the Malabar series of exercise and now we also have the Japanese Maritime Self Defence force joining it. That exercise will continue. We are not looking at joint patrols with the US Navy at this moment.
Q: At the recent Navy Commanders Conference one key thing that came was increasing the footprint of the Indian navy under the Mission Based Deployment. What are you trying to achieve?
A: These are our areas of interest. We have had a permanent deployment of a ship in the Gulf of Aden for anti-piracy operations since October 2008. Last year we have relooked at our deployment pattern and we reached a consensus within the Navy to have mission based deployment so that our areas of interest can be kept under permanent surveillance. We started off by having a ship deployed permanently in Andaman Sea and approaches to the Malacca straits. Then we have mission based deployments in the North Arabian Sea, Gulf of Oman and Persian Gulf. Similarly, in the Northern part of Bay of Bengal and we are enhancing our surveillance in the South part, near Sri Lanka. We are also sending ships to the Lombok and Sunda straits. So the ingress and egress routes of Indian Ocean region are being kept under surveillance so that we have better maritime domain awareness and know what is happening.
Q: Is that the reason why we got to know that People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) deployment in the Indian Ocean has been one of the highest this year.
A: They (PLAN) on an average for the last 2-3 years had about 8-10 ships which have been deployed in the Northern Indian Ocean. August this year was a unique month where there was a change around of the anti-piracy escort force. There was also a group of PLAN ships which were transiting IOR to Russia to exercise. This put together in the month of August the total PLAN ships spiked to 14. The present assessment, I don’t think they will go up further.
Q: India has been undertaking capacity building of countries in IOR. How do you plan to increase it further?
A: We work in close liaison with island nations Maldives, Seychelles, Mauritius and Sri Lanka. We are assisting them in capacity and capability enhancements in the form of training to their personnel and other is proving assets in the form of ships and aircraft. We are working with them in coordinated patrols, keeping surveillance of EEZ on their request. That is what we are doing and will continue to do.
Q: How far are we in countering Chinese presence in Djibouti and the Indian Ocean?
A: They have a base in Djibouti. There has been a change in the shareholding of Hambantota port. But Sri Lanka has assured that it is not an Operational Turn-around (OTR) port. It is a commercial hub and will be continued to be used for that. We will continue to work with likeminded nations and see how it proceeds.
Q: How do you intend to do the information exchange with the littoral states?
A: Exchange of Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA), India has been perusing signing of technical agreements and sharing of white shipping information. We already have agreements in place with 12 countries and most of them have been operationalized. The ones we have signed recently, we are working out mechanisms on how to operationalize. Through these agreements information has already started to flow in. In both directions, us to them and them to us. This is being collated on our systems we have in place and there is greater awareness. The picture we generate is shared with our ships through our network centric operation centres. It is a more effective system now.
Pakistan
Concerning India. On 14 November, Pakistan’s Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, General Zubair Mahmood Hayat, told a conference that Kashmir still remains a flash point for a nuclear war between Pakistan and India.
General Hayat spoke on the topic of “Regional Dynamics and Strategic Concerns in South Asia” at an international conference organized by the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI) in collaboration with the Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSF).
Hayat said the path to relations between Islamabad and New Delhi passes through Kashmir. “There is no bypass.” He said India has committed over 1,200 ceasefire violations in Kashmir in which 1,000 Pakistani civilians and 300 soldiers lost their lives. “This Indian behavior can turn into a big war,” he warned.
Hayat also accused India of carrying out terror activities in Pakistan through Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (i.e., Pakistani Taliban) and Baluchi separatists. He said Indian conspiracies against the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) were also no secret, adding that New Delhi has allocated $500 million to sabotage the CPEC.
Criticizing India's international ambitions, the general said New Delhi’s policies are becoming a cause of instability in South Asia. He said the political and strategic issues in South Asia were intensifying disputes in the region.
He said India was rapidly increasing its missile defense technology, nuclear weapons and conventional weapons. He said India is also diverting Pakistan’s share of its waters. “India is playing with fire and peace of South Asia. “
Comment: The Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, is usually the senior-most flag officer in the armed forces, but lacks command of any forces. He is a committee chairman and the senior flag officer for ceremonial purposes. The most powerful flag officer is the Pakistan Army Chief of Army Staff, General Qamar Javed Bajwa.
Hayat delivered the standard Pakistan Army threat briefing. The main points of Hayat’s remarks could have been written a half-century ago. Then, they would have had some meaning.
Today, it is astonishing that the senior Pakistani general would say that the Kashmir dispute is a flash point for nuclear war. That is a testament to the sclerosis in Pakistani strategic thinking in the past 16 or more years. Yet, in making the assertion, Hayat makes it a reality for India.
This kind of thinking about India helps explains the failure of Pakistan to provide adequate security for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and the propensity to blame India and Afghanistan for all of Pakistan’s security problems.
vijaykarthik wrote:Interesting that all this is coming up in the aftermath of the first shipment of wheat through Chabahar.
Explain why, pleaseTKiran wrote: Once CPEC is completed, India will never progress. Most probably, India would become "democracy with new Chinese characteristics."
CPEC failure is life and death question for India.
China under the second term of President Xi Jinping would deal with issues like the Dokalam standoff with India and the disputed South China Sea "squarely" and face them "head-on" to protect its legitimate interests, a Chinese expert said today.
"In the past, we thought we would shelve differences. Now, we will face disputes squarely," said Yuan Peng, Vice President of China Institutes of Contemporary International Relation, during his interaction with journalists here [Beijing] on the outcome of the recent once-in-a-five-year Congress of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC).
The Congress has endorsed a second five-year term for Xi as party's head and enshrined his ideological thought into the party Constitution.
Yuan said China under Xi might deal with issues like Dokalam head-on.
The 72-day-long standoff at Dokalam which began over Chinese military's plan to build a key road close to the Indian border in an area claimed by Bhutan ended on August 28 after it stopped the road building. Both sides pulled back their troops.
"So we now face these problems head on, and safeguard our legitimate interests," he said, adding that Beijing might do this in an "incremental way".
He also said "Indo-Pacific" being propounded by the US and the quadrilateral mechanism involving India, the US, Australia and Japan projecting India in a big way may become "a kind of trap".
He said it is not "wise" for India as it now enjoys balanced relations with the US and China.
The US wants to increase the strategic status of India as it is a large country and India also wants to get close to Washington. But smart Indian politicians" will not overlook ties with China, he said, adding that India is "quite cautious" in view of this. {This is the kind of 'massaging' that theyhave been trying to do with us for a long time now}
He said that there is an unhealthy mentality in the Western world to try and make use of India in order to 'contain' China's rise.
Terming India as the most promising country, he said the people of India should be cautious in handling relations with China.
Meanwhile, an editorial in the state-run Global Times said the mainstream media in India was obsessed with competing with China on GDP growth and international status.
Now they are keen to compare their country to Australia or Japan to see which can curry more favour from the US, it said.
After the US began using the term "Indo-Pacific," some Indian media outlets were ecstatic that their country had become an important pillar of this new US strategy", {This is the other approach, to belittle India and make us feel inferior} it added.
So more Doklam-type situations are on the anvil clearly -- restoring status-quo-ante is not going to be good enough if this is going to be their fallback tactic to grab territory aggressively. Chinese can impose a cost on India whenever they want as they get to initiate trouble at a time of their choosing."So we now face these problems head on, and safeguard our legitimate interests," he said, adding that Beijing might do this in an "incremental way".
India is the only challenger to China. US at the maximum can hedge India against China, if it doesn't work then G2 is always an option till US also going to be subjugated by China through trade and currency manipulation. RMB will be the reserve currency. Only people who visited China recently can understand how strong the strategic weapon TRADE is being used by China. It's no more subtle, every nation will buy from China. Literally from bricks to defence equipment, China will push it's own products. Trade is totally controlled by state, and party. Unless you see the vision of Xi from Chinese angle, you will never understand the scope of China domination. I have seen first hand how thousands of Indian engineers worked for Tibetan railway eventually lost all those jobs to Chinese, as they successfully reverse engineered and gained the edge. Those Indian engineers thought they can do such engineering again, but where is such a project, many of those bright indian engineers lost their career and some are working as software engineers doing cooly work. Chinese components for India defence projects is just a tip of the iceberg. Next time they will be more careful to cover their tracks.Bart S wrote:Explain why, pleaseTKiran wrote: Once CPEC is completed, India will never progress. Most probably, India would become "democracy with new Chinese characteristics."
CPEC failure is life and death question for India.
This is the long game closer to a marathon than a sprint -- drawing conclusions prematurely is easy but liable to be wrong. China's aggressive behavior is causing greater cohesion among countries that have come to view China as a long-term threat, if not contained. Game has hardly begun.TKiran: India is the only other country which can truly challenge China. US is a pussy already.
Let me start with this single point. Do you even know what it means for China to have its currency as a reserve currency? Before that do you know the requirements of a "reserve currency"?TKiran wrote: RMB will be the reserve currency.
ramana Ji :ramana wrote:That's Demonitization American style.....
You are not crazy. I did tweet that same thin long ago.
Peregrine, I think Xi Jinping realized Corruption is the Achilles heel of China.
Recall right after Opium wars it was the corrupt governors who allowed Western traders right to sell opium.
And rest is history....
Senior Chinese diplomat to visit North Korea as envoy of Xi
BEIJING (Reuters) - A senior Chinese diplomat will visit North Korea from Friday as a special envoy of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Beijing said, although it did not say he was planning to discuss North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic programs.
China has repeatedly pushed for a diplomatic solution to the crisis, but in recent months has had only limited high-level exchanges with North Korea. The last time China’s special envoy for North Korea visited the country was in February last year.
In a brief dispatch, the official Xinhua news agency said Song Tao, who heads the ruling Communist Party’s external affairs department, would leave for North Korea on Friday.
He will “inform the DPRK of the 19th CPC National Congress and visit the DPRK”, Xinhua said on Wednesday, using the North’s official name and referring to China’s recently concluded Communist Party Congress at which Xi further cemented his power.
North Korea’s KCNA news agency confirmed the visit, but said only that it would take place “soon”.
The trip will come just a week after U.S. President Donald Trump visited Beijing as part of a lengthy Asia tour, where he pressed for greater action to rein in North Korea, especially from China, with which North Korea does 90 percent of its trade.
It is not clear how long Song could stay, but he has already visited Vietnam and Laos to inform them of the results of the congress, a typical courtesy China extends other communist countries after such important meetings.
It is also unclear whether Song will meet North Korea’s youthful leader Kim Jong Un.
Song’s “main objective” in going to North Korea was to “report on the 19th Party Congress”, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a daily news briefing, adding that it was routine for China and other socialist countries to have such exchanges after important party meetings.
The two countries would also “exchange opinions on matters of mutual concern” during the visit, Geng added.
He reiterated that China was committed to resolving the Korean nuclear issue peacefully through consultation.
Kim and Xi exchanged messages of congratulations and thanks over the Chinese party congress, but neither leader has visited the other’s country since assuming power.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-north ... me=topNews
Aditya_V wrote:I am wondering whether the Chinese are doing assessment now with respect to viability of some of their BRI initiatives, Nepal pulling out of Budhi Gandaki, Pakistan pulling out of Chinese Investment in Diamer Bhasha dam, Chinese Company stopping a Electric transmission to Pakjab from Karachi.
These people are hardly the type to stand up to the Chinese, it is more like post Venezuela, Sri Lanka, the Chinese are temporarily evaluating the amount of credit they can be exposed and don't want to sitting on a pile of Bad debts.
And now that Chinese cash is dry the playing India Vs China card leaders in neighborhood are realising that is China is not the Santa claus they all thought they would be.
A recent visit to a school in Dehradun to participate in a military history seminar drew attention again to the tenacious Indian indifference to history in general and recent military history in particular.
My panel was on the India-China relationship and the temporal review was from the traumatic border war of October-November 1962 to the more recent face-off at Doklam. A brief conversation with the students and the teachers highlighted one of the abiding omissions in the Indian school curriculum — the near total absence of recent Indian military history. Recall, if any, is through Bollywood!
No recall
Various reasons were advanced for such omission but one major gap is the lack of an adequate body of work by way of well-researched books by professional Indian historians that could have been distilled for school children. A wry observation is that there are more books on the 1857 War for Independence (aka the Sepoy Mutiny in the British discourse) than the wars the Indian military was compelled to engage in after August 1947.
The 1962 border war with China receives episodic attention and it remains a traumatic memory for the Indian collective. This year marks the 55th anniversary of that chapter of national history, and the lack of public debate on it is depressing. The brief war has a boiler-plate Indian narrative to it that has acquired an inflexible index of certitude, wherein China is the aggressor and India the hapless victim. The Chinese narrative has its own contour, dwelling in the main on Indian perfidy and the arrogance of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Emotive nationalism has rendered the narratives on both sides more sacred and, equally, more brittle with every passing year.
The younger generation in India, that is those born after 1980, may not even recall the border war with China except in a hazy manner. However, it merits recall that those responsible for national security at the highest level in government proved to be inept, ignorant and arrogant in the defence management of the country. Nehru was broken by this episode, unable to come to terms with what had transpired. This is evidenced in the manner that the Henderson-Brooks report undertaken by the Army was not tabled in Parliament — in fact, it has still not been declassified.
The more unsavoury part of the history of the 1962 war was the role played by then Defence Minister, Krishna Menon, and his acolytes in the Army, led by Lt. General B.M. Kaul. But there is another aspect to the recall of the war and that is the forgotten heroism and gallantry of the Indian soldier in the face of extreme adversity.
Anecdotal fragments from that war refer to the grim and unpardonable reality of the Indian soldier, poorly clad in the cold and harsh terrain, marching up the icy heights of the Himalayas with ancient .303 rifles to face a much better equipped Chinese army.
Heroism at Rezang La
Despite such deficiencies, from Nathu La in 1962 to Kargil in 1999, the Indian soldier has remained stoic and steadfast in his commitment. Specific to the 1962 war, there were many acts of gallantry of the highest order, and regrettably they are little remembered today. One battle often recalled by professionals is that fought by a company of 13 Kumaon at Rezang La in the Ladakh region on November 18, 1962. Gallantry in battle cannot be meaningfully quantified, much less compared but the odds were against the 123 men led by Major Shaitan Singh and all but 14 died, rifle in hand, in battle position as the Chinese overwhelmed them. Their bodies were discovered only in January 1963 by a local shepherd, and it was then that the texture of their indomitable heroism became discernible.
Independent India has faced many challenges to national security and territorial integrity, beginning with the war for Kashmir in October 1947 and through the Mumbai terror attacks of November 2008. The need to introduce an appropriate capsule in the school curriculum should need little reiteration, but it has remained elusive for more than half a century. Can this project begin now?
C. Uday Bhaskar, a retired Commodore, is Director, Society for Policy Studies, New Delhi
US President Donald Trump reiterated his administration’s goal to denuclearise North Korea through a campaign of “maximum pressure” and hinted at punitive measures against trading partners in Asia.
“We have to denuclearise North Korea. We have ended the failed strategy of strategic patience and as a result we have already seen important progress including tough new sanctions from the UN [Security] Council,” Trump said a day after returning from Asia. “We made it clear [in China] that all options remain on the table” to force Pyongyang to end its nuclear weapons programme.”
The hardline comments on North Korea underscored Trump’s top priority on his 12-day trip, during which he put efforts to halt Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme on top of his agenda in talks with China’s President Xi Jinping, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in.
Amid negotiations with Xi, Trump’s insistence on action against Pyongyang may have helped spur China to send an envoy to North Korea, said Orville Schell, director of the Asia Society’s Centre on US-China Relations in New York.
US President Donald Trump pictured on Sunday during his visit to Vietnam. Photo: Associated Press
Song Tao, the head of the Communist Party’s international liaison department, will visit Pyongyang as a special envoy of President Xi Jinping, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday.
“You do have to ask, in Beijing what finally did [Trump] finally get? We don’t know everything that was talked about, whether something may have been discussed, and this trip by Song Tao would be a result of some of the things they talked about in Beijing,” Schell said in a panel discussion in New York.
Emphasising the goal of denuclearisation multiple times, Trump repeated positions that have caused friction with China, including the expansion of a US missile defence system in South Korea and a rejection of a “freeze-for-freeze” agreement whereby the US would scale back joint military exercises with the country around the Korean peninsula.
“The United States welcomed the decision of Moon to remove the payload restrictions on missiles to combat the North Korean threat and together we reaffirmed our commitment to a campaign of maximum pressure,” Trump said.
The US president added that he was aiming to reduce his country’s “staggering trade deficit with China” and, later in his speech from the White House, threatened “trade action” to cut the country’s trade deficit. At about US$350 billion, China has the largest trade surplus with the US.
Tough talk on the deficit may signal greater confrontation between Trump’s administration and China.
“We will never again turn a blind eye to trading abuses, to cheating, economic aggression or anything else from countries that profess a belief in open trade but do not follow the rules,” said Trump. “We will take every trade action necessary to achieve the fair and reciprocal treatment that the United States has offered the world for decades.”
Bonnie Glaser, a senior adviser for Asia at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said at the Asia Society panel discussion: “Many people, including the president, continue to talk about what they refer to as China’s predatory trade practices and there are people … who are doing work studying the ways in which China is pursing its economic interests at the expense of the United States.
“I believe we are going to see trade actions by the US against China,” Glaser added.
Other comments Trump made in his White House speech referred to commitments with Australia, Japan and India to guarantee navigation rights in the Asia-Pacific region.
Trump said “we made it clear [at an Asean summit] that no one owns the ocean”, the president said. “Freedom of navigation and overflight are critical to the security and prosperity of all nations.
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies ... Isdrjuah9f
ramana Ji :ramana wrote:I saw that too in the CPEC thread.
Teeroristan is like Golum and please master that he thinks can benefit from.
You could be right something was promised and those talks and interlocutor in Kashmir could be linked to Golum behavior mod.
Lets watch for the good Haqqani and others whispering....
Is Daimer-Basha in POK?
I think Diamer Basha being 'turned down' comes more from the Chinese (might be the Chinese company and not necessarily the govt) than the Pakistanis, though the declaration comes from the latter. The Chinese put in tough conditions (for Pakistanis that is, not for normal people) that effectively meant that the Pakistanis would have to pay for it and keep paying for the output (with guarantees in place), and there is no way that the Pakistanis can afford that, even if they want to.Peregrine wrote:ramana Ji :ramana wrote:That's Demonitization American style.....
You are not crazy. I did tweet that same thin long ago.
Peregrine, I think Xi Jinping realized Corruption is the Achilles heel of China.
Recall right after Opium wars it was the corrupt governors who allowed Western traders right to sell opium.
And rest is history....
Eleven Gin Pegs realizing that Corruption is the Achilles heel of China is - for want of a better term - a Game Changer! Surely he has been aware of it all the time but only now hehas the power to take action about it.
However, what strikes me is that Terroristan has been kowtowing to the Mighty Chinese Emperor - for quite some time - has now the "temerity and gall" to withdraw its Diamer-Basha Dam Project from the ambit of Chinese Controlled Projects.
This leads me to think of what have the American Administration i.e Trump down to the minions PROMISED TERRORISTAN? How come this sudden steel in the Terroristani spine against its all time Higher the Himalayas etc. etc. Fliend suddenly gone out of flavour? The mind boggles! What are your thought? Do tell ramana Ji!
Cheers
Identifying corruption is easy. Dealing with it administratively in a manner that doesn't simply cause the system to rise up and depose the guy striking down against it, is quite something else. There are plenty of passages within Chinese history itself, of a leader trying to corral corruption only to end up dead in a revolt somehow. The Red Guards arguably were agents of intellectual corruption, and even Mao at his height of power arguably lacked sufficient control over them.ramana wrote:That's Demonitization American style.....
You are not crazy. I did tweet that same thin long ago.
Peregrine, I think Xi Jinping realized Corruption is the Achilles heel of China.
Recall right after Opium wars it was the corrupt governors who allowed Western traders right to sell opium.
And rest is history....
Amid all the hectivities surrounding the Asean and East Asia summit meetings this week in Manila, another gathering in the Philippines capital that took place on the sidelines did not quite get the notice it probably deserves.
Two days before the Asean Summit, senior officials from the United States, Japan, Australia and India sat down for talks aimed at, in their words, keeping the Indo-Pacific region "free, open and inclusive". With this, the so-called Quad, short for Quadrilateral Dialogue, got a renewed lease of life. Should it gather momentum, Asia's security landscape could be altered for the next 100 years.
The first iteration of the Quad did not last long, perhaps because when it was mooted by Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe a decade ago during his all-too-brief first term, it was an idea whose time was yet to come. The uncharismatic Hu Jintao was still China's president and Beijing hadn't yet proclaimed its controversial nine-dash line claim over the South China Sea. India, always leery of needling China, particularly during the Manmohan Singh years, was a half-hearted participant.
Still, the first Quad meeting rattled China, which openly criticised the formation. In the event, the Quad was effectively killed in 2008 when then Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, standing next to his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi, announced Canberra's withdrawal from the group.
A decade on, the Asia-Pacific strategic landscape has changed significantly. Beijing lost its fear of the US during the Barack Obama years when, eager to get China onside for his climate change deal, the 44th US President turned a blind eye to its increasingly assertive behaviour and island building in the South China Sea. The result has been that where it once chafed at excessive US surveillance in its backyard, China now confidently fixes its gaze a long way afield, asserting that the Pacific Ocean is "big enough for both China and the US" and setting up its first overseas military base in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa.
Today, President Xi Jinping handles current US President Donald Trump with far more aplomb than does Mr Abe, a formal US ally. He can do so because China has secured its backyard, building where it wants in the South China Sea, installing radar and other military equipment, scaring off Vietnam from prospecting for oil within its exclusive economic zone and pressuring South Korea to bend to his will. Meanwhile, other long-time US allies in the region, such as the Philippines and Thailand, are redoing their sums.
China has also taken on the more powerful in Asia, intensifying its patrols in the waters around Japan, bothering Tokyo. On the other side of the map, with India, it has consistently shifted the goalposts in border negotiations and ignored New Delhi's sensitivities on the economic corridor it is building with Pakistan in disputed territory.
The two-month-long stand-off with India over the Doklam trijunction with Bhutan earlier this year, which came perilously close to open skirmishes between the two Asian giants, was a direct result of facts on the ground being sought to be altered to its advantage. Indeed, China is so used to having its way that the swift and forceful Indian response seemed to have taken it by surprise.
All this is causing concern not just in Asia but also around the world, including Washington and several European capitals. US assessment of Chinese behaviour was expressed unambiguously by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a major foreign policy speech last month when he plainly stated that "China's provocative actions in the South China Sea directly challenge international law and norms". Tellingly, Mr Tillerson went on to say that the US "will not shrink from China's challenges to the rules-based order".
The response to China's new strategic profile has been in the making for a while and its contours are now within view.
Fully aware that this juggernaut can be checked only by the US acting with two Asian nations - Japan and, to an extent, India - there have been attempts to fuse the two strategically. Mr Abe, his economy long ago pushed to second place by a surging China, and fearful of further marginalisation on the Asian landscape, has been a leading player, his political durability lending him added confidence as he goes about his mission.
While he has sought to make the constitutional changes at home that would allow Japan to have a regular military, fight overseas and come to the aid of an ally, he has assiduously sought to build a coalition of democracies with values that stand in open contrast to China's unilateralism, politically, economically and militarily. In all this, he has enthusiastically gone along with US attempts to bookend the Asia-Pacific with itself at one end and India, the dominant Indian Ocean power, at the other. Japan is now a firm participant in the annual Malabar exercises that the US conducts with India. This year, it sent the carrier Izumo to war games with Indian and US carriers in the Bay of Bengal.
This is where the Quad, which adds Australia, enters the frame. The US stoutly backs its presence, seeing Australia as a potentially significant naval power and a nation that has fought alongside it in every significant military campaign since the 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea. Mr Abe, too, enthusiastically endorses an Australian role. New Delhi, it seems, has shelved its reservations about Canberra. Hence, the Quad meeting in Manila.
Separately, the US Pacific Command has in recent years made dramatic semantic adjustments to the landscape in addition to the continuing military rebalance.
For the past four years, it has been referring to the "Indo-Asia-Pacific", a term it subsequently shortened to "Indo-Pacific". More recently, top US officials, including Mr Trump, have repeated that phrase ad nauseam, which is rather surprising given that this president is usually so allergic to the smallest holdover from the Obama days.
But the Indo-Pacific coinage, and the push to keep it "free and open" - the stated aim of the Quad - is part of the larger plan. The US is signalling to China that it is not the only game in Asia, only a part of it, no matter how powerful. At the same time, it is also an undisguised ploy to stoke Indian vanities and nudge New Delhi to shift away from its centrist instincts in foreign policy and towards a more committed relationship favouring the US and Japan.
This process has been going on for a bit. As its own fear of China grew, the US has been building up India as a counter within Asia, giving it access to ever more sophisticated defence technology, particularly in the sea control domain, and weaning it away from its traditional dependence on Russia for weapons.
India was the first military outside the US to get the P8i Poseidon maritime reconnaissance aircraft and recently agreed to buy Predator "Guardian" unmanned aerial vehicles, also for maritime use. A White House read-out of a meeting between Mr Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Manila said they "pledged to enhance their cooperation as major defence partners, resolving that two of the world's great democracies should also have the world's greatest militaries".
To the credit of the Indians, whose moods tend to swing from excessive elation to dark despair, they have lately shown little thrill at being thus flattered. It is for this reason that unlike in 2005, when Indians thrilled at then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saying the US would help India become "a major power in the 21st century", the reactions have been more muted, its steps carefully nuanced.
Indeed, a close reading of the statements put out by the four Quad nations after their first meeting shows that the Indians alone avoided mentioning issues like freedom of navigation and overflight, respect for international law, and the North Korean question - issues sensitive to China. Instead, they framed their participation as part of Mr Modi's Act East policy, "the cornerstone of engagement with the Asia-Pacific region".
And next month, India will host the foreign ministers of China and Russia for a trilateral meeting.
Still, there are indications that Mr Modi may be ready to put more muscle on the bones of that Act East policy.
One tiny indication is that he has accepted Singapore's invitation to participate in next year's Shangri-La Dialogue, the region's premier annual meeting of regional military and security chiefs, organised by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
In recent years, India had chosen to keep a low profile at these meetings, not wishing to show its hand more than it needs to. Mr Modi's appearance, therefore, could electrify things.
Aside from Indian reluctance to call out China unless it is compelled to, factors other than the omission of a joint statement from Manila suggest that the Quad is unlikely to evolve too fast, or dramatically.
Economic ties with China have become so deep that the US, Japan and Australia cannot afford an adversarial relationship with it. Rather than get into a gang fight, therefore, what all Quad nations really expect of China is better behaviour and respect for each member's sensitivities.
South-east Asia, weary of China's relentless pressure, may take comfort in seeing the regional overlord corralled one way or the other. But a successful Quad would marginalise Asean and rather than its much cherished centrality, leave the grouping in the unwelcome position of being the stuffing in a less than wholesome sandwich.
Ultimately, how the Quad shapes will probably be determined not in Washington, Tokyo, Canberra and New Delhi but in Beijing. It is in China's interest, therefore, to moderate its own behaviour in a manner that reduces the impetus for an "Asian Nato" to rise around it.