Complicated regional situation

One of the biggest headlines of 2013 must be China establishing an Air Defense Identification Zone in the East China Sea. Actually, more than 20 countries and regions have ADIZs and China is only following an established international practice.

Of all these ADIZs, Japan's must be the biggest, it covers a large part of the East China Sea, and comes as close as 130 kilometers to China's eastern coast. But it has reacted strongly to China's ADIZ by sending warplanes through the zone without reporting to China and demanding China cancel its ADIZ.

Japan's main ally, the United States holds a different view on the issue. Its bomber planes flew through the zone without reporting to China, but the government has advised its civil flights to submit their plans to China to avoid any trouble.

That shows the US' strategic goals are to maintain its hegemony and prevent any power from challenging it and to maintain the off-shore balance in Asia, and it is using China's disputes with its neighbors to "contain" China. Concerning Sino-Japanese relations, it hopes the two sides will continue their low-profile confrontations without actual military conflicts, so that both will be trapped in the dispute.

As a result, Japan's intention of dragging the other countries into its disputes with China is doomed to fail. That offers strategic space for China to use in its dispute with Japan.

Zhang Junshe, deputy head of the Naval Research Institute of the People's Liberation Army