Attitudes towards China's peaceful rise

Gideon Rachman's blog "Banquet in Beijing; seminar in Singapore" at the Financial Times:

...The question of how peaceful China’s rise will be was also the subject of our seminar in Singapore, organised by the Brookings Institution and the Lee Kuan Yew school of public policy. Generally speaking, the Americans were pretty wary, the Asians pretty sanguine and the Europeans faintly bemused.

The Americans are very mindful of the big increase in Chinese military spending and are also worried by potential instability inside China - and any potential knock-on effects on Chinese foreign policy.

Kishore Mahbubani of the Lee Kuan Yew school put a different gloss on events. He says that Asians generally “think that the Chinese are going to make it”: they will manage their peaceful rise. He also thinks that China’s neighbours take a largely benign view of its intentions, both in the region and around the world. But, as Mahbubani acknowledges, there are two big exceptions to this Asian optimism: Japan and Taiwan. And there is no doubt that the lone Japanese participant in the Singapore seminar sounded at least as anxious about China as the Americans....