China needs to deploy a more silken touch with its neighbours

Let's play the blame game. Let's bash the Japanese government for ratcheting up tension. Bad, bad Japanese, right? Isn't it just that simple?

Since May 3, 1947, Japanese people have lived (and on the whole lived graciously and productively) under the embrace of an American-concocted constitution that with determination tied its defence forces up in restrictive Article 9. But look how well it worked out: Japan became one of the world's greatest economies - until very recently, the No1 economy in Asia.

But now Shinzo Abe, working to realise his dream of dumping this iconic and ironic legacy of the second world war in history's dustbin, looks to be on the verge of … triumph! The prime minister has his party and party allies just a legislative click or two away from expanding the leeway (and budget) of the Self-Defence Forces when they have a need to "defend Japan", or help out allies, or whatever.

Of course, Japan-bashers are quick with the mean-genes argument: isn't it telling that Abe's mother was the daughter of Nobusuke Kishi, who, before becoming the 37th prime minister, distinguished himself as a member of the Tojo cabinet. No escaping those genes, eh?

Maybe, but here is what is far more interesting to me: that in his moment of political triumph, Abe's move elicited such a tepid response from the Japanese people - seemingly far from a gung-ho one in which they pull their samurai swords from the attic. One can imagine that colossally losing a world war - including a pair of atomic bombs dropped on two of their cities, leaving survivors and their children with a grim genetic legacy - might just take the fizz out of the champagne.

So how in the world did Abe carry the day against the admirably noble (and smartly pragmatic) pacifism of the Japanese people? What was the secret behind his mini-coup? Someone must have stepped up big time to help him peddle the idea of military renewal to a populace that on the whole had been saying: "No, we've been down that road before - never again."

What in the world happened? Part of the answer is to be found in the government's recent defence white paper, its message as obvious as the Great Wall of China. At its centre is general obsession, and in the text are many particulars. There's the well-documented Chinese naval build-up, the potent policy influence of a possibly semi-sovereign People's Liberation Army (reflected in Chinese President Xi Jinping's campaign to tame it), and China's fast and furious land reclamation and sandbar resurrection projects, which Beijing says are more like open-to-all neighbourhood recreation centres, but which most normal people say surely look like burgeoning military bases.

Japan's white paper concludes: Beijing is "poised to fulfil its unilateral demands without compromise" by the blunt instrumentality of "coercive attempts to change the status quo".