Stratfor has recently observed that, with China's economic rise, it now has an imperative to secure key trade routes and to protect its overseas resources and markets from foreign interdiction. This adds to the three imperatives that have historically defined the country's geopolitics: the maintenance of a united Han China, control of the country's buffer regions and the protection of China's coastline. Although this emerging priority does not dictate China's attitude toward its neighbors or the United States, it nonetheless introduces an underlying compulsion that in the years to come will reshape the costs and benefits of different courses of action, thus changing China's decision-making process....
