Getting Hot Part 2: The Golden Rule

[Don Corleone]

Not that Golden Rule, which governs things at the interpersonal level, I mean the one world governments operate under... "He who has the gold makes the rules!"

China has decided to claim the East China Sea and now the South China sea as sovereign internal bodies of water/zones of control.
http://www.reuters.com/article/south...0UI1ZX20160105

Beyond the untold petroleum reserves and other natural resourcesdown there, they'll also be asserting control over trillions of dollars of international shipping which travels through that region, as well as effectively turn the Phillipines and Malaysia into vassal states while ruining the economies of Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and possibly Japan. Taiwan can kiss independence goodbye. Meanwhile the US seems strangely placid, almost like we owe the aggresive Chinese authorities something... Oh wait, we do!!!

Does anybody have a feel-good 'behind-the-scenes' analysis that points to a way out of this except for China getting greedier and greedier until the other nations in the region figure they have nothing left to lose and unite against them in open warfare?

I know, a bit glum on my part, but y'all do know that Japan modified their post-war constitution late last year to 1) remove size restrictions on its armed forces and 2) allow for forward operations of a non-defensive nature, right?