Feb 7th 2011, 19:08:29
Braden... in North America and (to a lesser extent) Europe, we have a habit of talking about "Asia" as if it's one entity. It's not.
China, Japan, India, South Korea... they're all huge economies and are all forced to trade with one another -- but none of them like each other. There's a lot of bad blood between them all.
It's essentially the same as the Germany/Russia issues. They've done awful things to one another in the past. Except, in the case of Russia/Germany, this only goes back about 100 years. In the case of Asia, they've had problems just as recently but they also have a couple thousand years of the same thing before that.
China sees itself as a competitor with the United States. They don't quite want the same thing as cold war USSR/USA, but they want to compete for global position.
South Korea and Japan both align themselves with the US. They hate each other, but play nice for the most part because the US wants them to. Neither likes China, but both look down on India.
India's pretty independent. They hate China, and have a huge inferiority complex when it comes to Japan and (to a lesser degree) South Korea. They tend to align themselves with the US globally, but regionally they oppose a lot of the US's actions because they support Pakistan.
-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.
China, Japan, India, South Korea... they're all huge economies and are all forced to trade with one another -- but none of them like each other. There's a lot of bad blood between them all.
It's essentially the same as the Germany/Russia issues. They've done awful things to one another in the past. Except, in the case of Russia/Germany, this only goes back about 100 years. In the case of Asia, they've had problems just as recently but they also have a couple thousand years of the same thing before that.
China sees itself as a competitor with the United States. They don't quite want the same thing as cold war USSR/USA, but they want to compete for global position.
South Korea and Japan both align themselves with the US. They hate each other, but play nice for the most part because the US wants them to. Neither likes China, but both look down on India.
India's pretty independent. They hate China, and have a huge inferiority complex when it comes to Japan and (to a lesser degree) South Korea. They tend to align themselves with the US globally, but regionally they oppose a lot of the US's actions because they support Pakistan.
-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.