IR musings: Is China a Threat?

This is a question which always attracts eyes-rolling when posed to certain people. From such reactions, it would seem that the answer is obviously a `Duh! What do you think? Of course China is a threat. Can`t you see how aggressive she is?` and the list of replies goes on.

I, for one, do not see the obviousness of the threat posed by China although it is considered conventional wisdom in the international relations of East and Southeast Asia that the stability of cross-strait (Taiwan-China relations) relations is pivotal to the stability of the region. There is no doubt that should a war occur in that part of the region (or any other part, for that matter), any instability which results will be highly problematic for many.

Yet, it always rankles when China is as a matter of course projected as this natural threat which should be apparent to anybody with just a little bit of sense. Why should that be the case?
A list of states which can be considered a much bigger threat to world peace can be easily obtained, especially if one is willing to be more emphatically `objective` in one`s perspectives.

Nonetheless, it must be qualified that it is not the objective of this blog to argue that China is not a threat, which would certainly be laughable in particular contexts and frameworks.
Instead, it might be more helpful for the question to be framed as: Why is China a threat? To whom and in what contexts?

Thank you.

Idiotic first-timer...

Hmm... what do you write in a blog when you have never written one before? I have absolutely no idea.
(Note to self: Work on it)

In light of this cluenessness, leaving a tiny notion of a personal worldview might be a spark of hopeful start:

`... all the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity... And for most of that time, wisdom has had to work in secret, whispering her words, moving like a spy through the humble places of the world while the courts and palaces are occupied by her enemies.`
(Excerpt taken from His Dark Materials: The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman, Scholastic Press 2002, pg. 983)