The Indian Navy is now going to put its oar into this argument.
Pardon the pun !

http://tinyurl.com/juygwuj

um..yes..the Marco Polo punchline is :
He had a map and China has a map and his is earlier and he wins.
So Italy owns China and the China sea.
So we shut down the Pilbara and let Brazil get all the iron-ore billions. On Chinese ships with Chinese insurance which doesn't cover Australia's subs with sub-standard cyber gear. ( check US comments on their sad situation compared with the bad guys).

But China is now emulating...Imperial Japan (LEGO).
Would the Japanese have stopped, if they had won the Second World War? (Loudmouth).

One very important, cardinal axis in in prewar Japanese foreign policy since its opening up in 1854 had been to keep friendly relations as far as possible with Great Britain and the United States, as I said before.
"Many people who are familiar with WWII may think that the Japanese of the time were all solely fixated on going to war with the United States to win dominance in the Pacific, but Ambassador Grew reveals that most Japanese actually wanted peace with the US (Makr Thrice's comment on Joseph Grew/Ten Years in Japan, amazon usa)." Grew was in Japan for about ten years as the last US ambassadot to prewar Japan. (I do not agree to everything said in the book, though.)
"In the case of Pearl Harbor, FDR asked for it by giving Japan an ultimatum in late November, 1941 (By A Customer on Octobeer 6, 2003's comment on Hamilton Fish/Tragic Deception, amazon usa).
Japan finally decided to go to war on December 1, 1941, Japan Standard Time. Japan's War and Peace is far more interesting than Tolstoy's, if Australians read it correctly.

Australians, like Americans, seem to have a lot of difficulty in telling Chinese/China apart from Japanese/Japan. I (Yoshimichi Moriyama) told an easy rule for it in my four comments on eastasiaforum/Hugh White/Need to face the facts in Asia.
I also said the perfect Chinese logic in claiming to the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea in my three comments on eastasiaforum/Sam Bateman/Brinkmanship in the South China Sea helps nobody.
I hope you Australians will find them entertaining.

PS
www.eastasiaforum.org/2016/06/07/brinkmanship-in-the-south-china-sea-helps-nobody/.

www.eastasiaforum.org/2016/04/18/need-to-face-the-facts-in-asia/.

The Franklin Roosevelt administration was more willing than unwilling from the summer of 1941 to have war on Japan. But I do not intend to mean by this that therefore the United States was 100% responsible for the outbreak of the war.

The way things are going in the build up to the US election in November, Trump looks like he could achieve his goal of becoming president..
IF that happens, I've heard he has plans to scale back US investment in propping up defenses in Japan and South Korea. He expects them to fund their own defences. Not sure what he thinks of the other SE Asian countries that border the south china sea.
My worrying concern is if he considers the ANZUS treaty we have with them up for review or leave it as it is??

Anxious days ahead for all..

G'day Michi,

Neither China now, or Japan then, have any right, any more than any other country, to build empires.

But since you've put your toe in the water, it may help to point out that Japan did invade Taiwan back in the 1890s.

Japan invaded Korea around 1905.

Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931.

Japan invaded China proper in 1937.

Japan fought a war of possession of eastern Siberia with the Soviet Union around 1938.

Japan occupied French Indo-China in 1940.

Japan did attack Hong Kong, the Philippines, Burma, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, Papua-New Guinea and Australia in 1941-1942.

Japan sent planes to bomb eastern Indian cities (and ?perhaps Ceylonese coastal towns).

So you're right: the US may not have been 100 % responsible for the outbreak of war in the Pacific and South-East Asia. Gosh, I wonder who was then ?

Cheers,

Joe