That a nation is shaped by its geography is axiomatic. This re-featured monogram of June 2008, provides a fine basic understanding of China, regarding that nation as an island, in that if it has control of the borders of Tibet, Mongolia, and the Muslim west, it is insulated, except for its vulnerable eastern seacoast. From the coast foreigners have entered, particularly the brutal Japanese military. “China is hard to invade; given its size and population, it is even harder to occupy. This also makes it hard for the Chinese to invade others - not utterly impossible, but quite difficult.”

“For Mao, xenophobia was integral to national policy. He saw foreign presence as undermining the stability of China.” His successor, Deng Xiaoping, had a different view. He saw China’s poverty and backwardness as its major weakness. He consequently moved to improve living standards, in part by encouraging export directed industries, thus opening critical ties with the outside world. China has now become so intermeshed with the world economy that it has, for instance, a stake in American prosperity. China is dependent now on the outside world. Mao would be angry.

But China still worries about its vulnerability to threats from the sea, including the fear of blockade by a powerful U.S. Navy. As a great nation, and to stymie any blockade, it wants modern missile forces and blue water naval capabilities proper to a first ranking nation. “Taiwan is also an important symbolic issue to China and a way to rally nationalism. Although Taiwan presents no immediate threat, it does pose potential dangers that China cannot ignore.”

An even larger danger, however, is the possibility that China’s exports will fall. That would leave its coastal regions suffering, and its still relatively poor and very populous interior Han provinces with little chance to rise in wealth. This would threaten internal chaos and the nation’s unity. China is a rising great power, but has its vulnerabilities.