Maybe China will start building an aircraft carrier.
Since the mid-1990s, Yan has worked tirelessly to sell this concept to the Chinese Foreign Ministry—which has traditionally been suspicious of international institutions—arguing that regional integration will bring all kinds of practical benefits to China. And Beijing has slowly come around; for example, it now supports the idea of an “East Asian Community” that would be modeled on the European Union.
Hey, that’s great, and they could even call it the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere! A bloc of Asian nations led by China and free of the West! Seriously, it’s like a tape on permanent replay.
I’m going to stick to my belief that, regardless of what the fringe loonies in every country may want, access to the global free market is too profitable for any successfully integrated nation to do anything that risks endangering that access.