All of the littoral countries fear Chinese ambitions. The most striking manifestation of this has been the rapprochement between Vietnam and the US. As the Americans have reason to appreciate, the Vietnamese can fight wars. American warships conduct joint exercises with their Vietnamese counterparts, and the US has become Communist Vietnam's largest foreign investor.   

As the US switches 60 per cent of its defence effort to the Pacific, including a new X-Band radar system, as worrying to China as the East European anti-Iranian missile equivalent was to Russia, the Chinese Navy is deciding what to call its first aircraft carrier. In 1998 a private company bought the rusting hull of the Varyag, a former Soviet aircraft carrier from a shipyard in the Ukraine, claiming it was destined to become a floating casino. After extensive refitting, it is now a carrier smaller than any in the US fleet, but larger than France's Charles de Gaulle (Britain doesn't have any). 

As Confucius wrote: "If something is not named properly, then it can hardly be justified in argument. If something is not properly justified, then it can hardly achieve its aim." During the Cultural Revolution, Mao revised how ships were named, using provinces and regions for the class, with a number for the vessel itself. Beijing is toying with the idea of naming its new carrier after the renegade admiral, Shi Lang, who in 1683 led 300 ships to conquer Formosa (now Taiwan), thereby completing the Qing empire.

There are ominous reports that China is trying to close the 20-year gap between its navy and that of the US, building a new generation of catamaran carriers with twin flight decks and submarine docks. Such vessels are not designed to seize a few rocks in the middle of nowhere, but for real mischief, especially if the Chinese government loses control of the chauvinist tweeters and bloggers it has let loose on its critics and they end up forcing its hand.