Those two nations would become increasingly alarmed, in the words of a retired Japanese admiral, by “China’s unilateral ambition to monopolize the whole South China Sea” and achieve “control of most of the sea lanes of communications” and “the lifelines” of Japan and Korea. Yet both Japan and South Korea are increasingly interconnected with China. Japan’s exports to China are about the same as those to the United States—about 20 percent in each case of total exports. Korea is more dependent—27 percent of its exports go to China, as opposed to 12 percent to the United States.
