How China Benefits from Restraint

What if Chinese nationalism is not the bogey it is so often made out to be? The general reaction outside the country to the current round of confrontations in the seas of East Asia is that they are all a result of the Chinese wanting to flex their muscles against their neighbors and to proclaim their national destiny. This fits a narrative developed by observers since the mid-1990s of the leadership whipping up nationalism as one of the regime's compensations for its lack of electoral legitimacy and to further its underlying purpose of replacing the United States as the dominant strategic power in East Asia.