(BBC) US President Barack Obama has assured Japan that islands at the centre of its territorial dispute with China are covered by a bilateral defence treaty. [...] US officials have made such comments in the past, but this is the first time Mr Obama has given such explicit support.Relations have become severely strained between China and Japan over a raft of issues of late, including a number of islands in the East China Sea, Japan has owned these for years, but with the growth of Chinese military might, so has the area which China claims belongs to it. Which is why we have seen Chinese ships sailing repeatedly in and out of Japanese territorial waters, why China declared an air defence identification zone over the islands, all in an attempt to intimidate Tokyo into walking away without a fight.
However, Japan hasn't backed down and instead, it has started to rearm, it has rewritten its constitution to allow it to work (militarily) with other nations, to sell arms. While its small size may not have worried the mandarins in Beijing much, the open backing of the US will.
