High-stakes stand-off between Japan and China won't come to war

Let's spare a moment to feel absolutely terrified. China and Japan, with all the forethought of two angry bulls, appear to be spoiling for a fight with the potential to wreck East Asia.

A Sino-Japanese war would be calamitous for both countries, win or lose, and for the rest of us besides. Even so, some respected observers are warning that the brinkmanship of 2012, far from cooling heads in Beijing and Tokyo, was only a prelude to full-bore hostilities later this year.

The stakes are almost too high to take on board. Even a limited Sino-Japanese conflict would be very damaging: the loss of life would probably be contained, but the economies of both countries would take a battering, while the global economy would also suffer badly. As for a larger, protracted war in which the US intervened against China on Japan's behalf … Well, on that day, we can all forget about Leung Chun-ying's basement and about what Brad Pitt might be saying on Weibo, because the free-and-easy world we know will have just melted down.

So is it time to start stocking up on canned food and bottled water? How worried should we really be?

One eminent Asia-watcher, Professor Hugh White of the Australian National University, reckons that canned-food hour is nearly upon us. "Don't be too surprised if the US and Japan go to war with China [in 2013] over the uninhabited rocks that Japan calls the Senkakus and China calls the Diaoyu islands," White recently advised in the Sydney Morning Herald. Without a swift outbreak of diplomatic common sense, of which there is currently little sign, he foresees further escalation leading sooner or later to a violent confrontation between Chinese and Japanese/US forces, at which point "a spiral to war begins that no one can stop".

White is not alone in seeing the trend lines converging towards a scary and violent endpoint. US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was recently handed a security assessment warning that the China-Japan problem could spin out of control unless they get around the table and make darn sure that it doesn't. Joseph Nye, a big-hitter of political science, was part of the brains trust that delivered the report. Meanwhile, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences came to a bleak conclusion in its end-of-year review, judging conflict with Japan over the disputed islands to be "inevitable".

China's military build-up, its antipathy towards Japan and its inflexibility on sovereignty issues are nothing new. The novel and dangerous side of the unfolding equation, the war-niks argue, is the nationalist turn in Japanese politics, embodied by the election of the conservative Shinzo Abe. Abe campaigned on a platform of being tougher on China, and his administration has wasted no time outlining plans to increase defence spending and expand the armed forces. So if and when a confrontation erupts, it will be hard for the tough-talking Abe to back down - just as China's incoming president, Xi Jinping , will not want to look soft by ducking any Japanese punches.