Japan

Strategic competition between Japan and China spanning five dimensions: the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands and adjacent East China Sea waters, Japan's position on the Taiwan question, Japan's defense posture and the constitutional constraints on it, Chinese trade and travel measures applied to Japan, and disputes over the interpretation of wartime history. Each dimension carries its own vocabulary and set of actors, and the five interact with each other over time.

The unresolved confrontation on the Korean Peninsula, where the Korean War was halted by an armistice rather than concluded by a peace treaty. Five axes run through it: North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programme and the sanctions architecture built around it; the United States-South Korea alliance, with its exercises, command arrangements and extended-deterrence commitments; North Korea's military alignment with Russia, including troop deployments to the war in Ukraine; China's economic and diplomatic patronage of Pyongyang; and the inter-Korean relationship itself, which North Korea has redefined constitutionally as a relationship between separate states. Coverage divides by bloc: Western, South Korean and Japanese outlets report the Northern programme as a threat requiring containment, while Russian and Chinese state media present Pyongyang's arrangements with Moscow and Beijing as lawful cooperation between sovereign states.