when the unarmed USNS Impeccable was harassed by 5 Chinese vessels 75 miles off the Yulin Naval Base on 8 March, 2009, what matters is not plainly who infringed upon whose legal rights. after the 2001 Hainan Island mid-air crash, this is yet another episode in which the U.S. and China collide. how the greatest contemporary rivalry of our time plays out will alter the balance of power in Asia, with significant bearings on the perennial South China Sea territorial disputes.

actually, a simple memory jog evidences that there has already been a shift in the U.S.-China power balance. 60 years ago, the then rudimentary People's Liberation Army (PLA) had only mere numbers to halt the American advance into North Korea. Victorious or not, communist China was destitute, and Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward further crippled the economy. 30 years later, a confident Deng Xiaoping swarmed northern Vietnam with 200,000 troops in response to the latter's engagement in China-sponsored Pol Pot's Cambodia. Although Deng's "short-arms-short-legs" PLA could not quite "teach Vietnam a lesson" as he had wished, the bold move sent a powerful message to nuclear-armed America that China was not deterred to make its own decisions (even without the backing of the Soviet Union). and which other country has ever held official American personnel hostage to an impotent U.S. as China did in the Hainan Island incident of 2001? besides Iran, I think there is none.

America is certainly not getting weaker. it will stay the world's greatest economic, technological and military powerhouse and no others will come close even in a hundred years. what's happening is that China is fast - and I mean really fast - rising; nobody can afford not to be swayed by the sheer gravity of this 9.6 million km² landmass of 1.3 billion people who produce US$7 trillion (PPP) a year and spend more than the UK or France or Germany or Japan on their military - and rising. it will not take long before the Chinese walk the moon. and as Lee Kuan Yew put it to Deng Xiaoping, if the landless peasants from China could come build a first-world Singapore, the mainland can definitely better that in no time.

it is also interesting to note how, when the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis hit East Asia, the West was preaching and America's trio Robert Rubin - Alan Greenspan - Lawrence Summers were featured by Time as the "committee to save the world." 10 years on, as the subprime crisis hit the U.S., while Rubin had resigned from Citigroup's board, Greenspan admitted he was wrong and only Summers remains (epitome of Krugman's magazine cover effect), China's central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan is advising the U.S. and other Western governments to follow China's "prompt, decisive and effective policy measures, demonstrating its superior system advantage when it comes to making vital policy decisions" to deal with the crisis.

and just back in 2007, then U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was pushing for China to revalue the yuan to help fight China's inflation and correct trade balances, only to have Chinese vice-minister of commerce Chen Denming flatly refute that the weakening dollar, and not the pegged yuan, was the problem. today, China needs no such provocation from the U.S. to assert its will. when Premier Wen was "a little bit worried" about Chinese assets in the U.S., he said so on national newspaper, and had Obama promptly assure him of the safety of China's US$700 billion in American bonds. soon after that, governor Zhou has gone as far as to boldly suggest, in both Chinese and English, an international reserve currency to replace the U.S. dollar, much to the anxiety of Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke half the world away.

but China does not actually need the proposed reserve currency to be materialised; the country already has a burgeoning economy to bolster its growing international clout. as China continues to peacefully rise, it will further pull its weight on important global matters. and there is no better time than now for China to take centre stage of the world when the West is in disarray. it is noteworthy that Lee Kuan Yew once commented how China's "peaceful rise" was semantically contradictory - a rise is meant to be violent, not smooth. Lee thought a "peaceful renaissance" should describe China's designed vision better.

there is a good reason why the U.S. keeps such a close watch on China's military expenditures. for one, Americans know they are king of the sea. but they also very well understand that as long as they are not god, China is capable of outsting any king. there is no guarantee of America's predominant naval position in Asia now that China is expanding deep into the South China Sea. and so how the U.S. should respond hinges on whether this is a rise or a renaissance of China. a Chinese renaissance should not be a cause for American reinforcements of destroyers and battle ships to the region, not when the U.S. is still deep in the quagmire of Afghanistan. but a rise would call for a different, hardened, approach - the U.S. must firmly neutralise South China Sea conflicts and promptly support Southeast Asian claimant states, who cannot match China's might in any substantive way.

in the meantime, let's hope no oil is found underneath the seabed.