Analysis: One misunderstanding could trigger global crisis

The game of military bluff China and the United States are playing off the Chinese coast could erupt in full-fledged crisis hitting the arteries of global trade if Pentagon worries about missteps ever come true.

China has been investing big slices of its growing wealth in modernising its military, and turning its once creaky navy into a fleet that can project power far from its shores, with nuclear submarines and, perhaps one day, aircraft carriers.

China is sending naval vessels further afield – to the waters off Somalia to fight pirates, and most recently through the southern Japanese islands, to Tokyo's angst.

That also worries Washington, the world's dominant power, which keeps a substantial military presence in the Asia-Pacific.

While war between the two economically intertwined powers remains a remote possibility, the Pentagon has warned of "misunderstanding and miscalculation" getting out of hand in this trade-driven part of the world plied by thousands of ships daily carrying cargo and oil.

"The US military and the Chinese military don't have a common understanding, a rules of the road, for navigation. That's a major cause for concern," said Drew Thompson, a China expert at the Nixon Centre in Washington.

The United States for its part has shown no sign of giving up surveillance missions in what it considers international waters and which infuriate Beijing.

Through missteps or miscalculations, the shadowing and jostling between the two sides could flare into a crisis.

With the two militaries not speaking after Beijing cut off contacts over US plans to sell arms to Taiwan, the risk of something bad happening is now elevated further.

"The biggest potential for conflict between China and the United States is in a naval face-off," Wang Jisi, a prominent international relations professor at Peking University, said recently, according to a Chinese current affairs magazine. "The United States is increasing its surveillance and patrols. As neither have established crisis prevention or management systems, a military clash could morph into a political crisis."