World Commentary
The simple but evident overarching dynamic in our region is like the clash of two tectonic plates, as a rising and outwardly expanding China challenges the hegemonic power of the US and the regional order adhering to it. It is increasingly difficult to understand the daily flow of political events outside this reality.
The US cannot escape the decision either to accommodate or resist China's claim to displace it as the primary and ultimately hegemonic power in the western Pacific. Either choice is fraught with dangers. Perhaps some balance of accommodation and resistance, balancing Cold War-style containment of China (including through eager regional allies such as Japan, Vietnam and India) with modern economic engagement (especially by giving China greater weight in international bodies such at the International Monetary Fund) is possible.
But every strategic road leads to risk of confrontation or possibly war. This clash of geopolitical tectonic plates will define our Asia-Pacific security and economic environment in the coming decades. 
Australian policymakers must be forward-looking and realistic in responding. There are multiple fault lines where Chinese and US interests may collide. Three stand out for their potential scale and impact.
Taiwan On   January 16, Taiwan again vigorously exercised its democratic system to bring about a peaceful change of government. The example of a sustainable Chinese democracy, passionately supported by its citizens, is a horror movie for the Chinese Communist Party.
Behind Beijing's patriotic calls for One China lies a genuine emotion to "reunify" Taiwan.
However, there is also the overriding need to ensure Taiwan is not legitimised as a nation in any way that might also legitimise liberal democracy as a system of government for mainland China. Hence we underestimate the possibility that China will intervene militarily to eliminate democracy in Taiwan should such legitimacy risk being imported to the mainland.
The foremost thrust of China's military development is to be able to deny Taiwan US military protection. It has missile superiority across the Taiwan Strait, and a looming capacity to sink US carriers and deny the US Navy access near its coastal seas.
Despite this, Taiwan may not be the first geopolitical earthquake, even as it continues to endure the tragedies of real earthquakes. Hopefully the island will prosper peacefully within the contours of its compromise status for many decades to come. Mainland China may turn slow towards democracy, removing the issues entirely. But for Beijing there is no greater geopolitical priority than containing and in due course reclaiming Taiwan.
The Korean Peninsula We are well used to the antics of North Korean dictator Kim Jung-un - his savagery towards his own people, his nuclear card playing and the awful consequences of his military adventurism. In contrast, South Korea has become a prosperous democracy, fully embedded in the liberal international system, protected by the US military.
Yet a curious paradox underlies this division of Korea 64 years ago. China's support for the North's appalling regime may keep the peninsula split but it no longer serves China's long-term geopolitical interests.
The division adheres South Korea to the US and to Japan and serves no purpose in containing those nations' regional expansion as they are defensive status quo powers, seeking to maintain rather than expand territory and influence.
However, the North Korean threat reinforces the overall dynamic of US alliance-building in the region, and positions China as supporting a brutal and paranoid regime, which hardly assists the hard or soft power of China in the region (or globally). The latest development of South Korea moving to accept US THAAD missile deployment in response to Kim's rocket test well captures this reality.
Now consider a radically alternative scenario. China offers South Korea a strategic bargain: its full security and economic support for reunification of Korea under a South Korean-led regime, in return only for the neutrality of the new Korea, with the withdrawal of all foreign troops by an agreed date. South Korea agrees.
Before North Korea reacts with nuclear belligerence, China launches pre-emptive airstrikes to take out its nuclear capabilities and invades the North with a stabilisation and peacekeeping force, which will be withdrawn concurrently with the withdrawal of US forces from the South.
In one geopolitical masterstroke, China has secured the neutrality and goodwill of a key neighbour, evicted US forces from a key strategic geography, probably driven Japan towards more intensive military expansion that will scare the neighbourhood, and created a powerful narrative for the reunification of Taiwan with China. You can hear the echoes of Richard Nixon's brilliant "opening to China" in such a game-changing move.
There are arguments today within the Chinese government in favour of supporting South rather than North Korea, given the increasingly obvious strategic dividends of such a policy upheaval. This is an earthquake waiting to happen, and while very dramatic, it may have yet manageable outcomes.
South China and East China seas These two seas clearly are geographically separate areas but they are geopolitically enmeshed. Both are part of China's fundamental push to assert naval dominance beyond the so-called second island chain, which is another way of saying that the US is to cede naval dominance in these seas, with nations in this region accepting Chinese naval dominance.
The seas are also linked because of Japan. Tokyo has a delicately managed stand-off with China in the East China Sea over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands.
At the same time the Abe government has vigorously reset Japan's defence posture towards regional engagement and alliance-building. An example of this occurred when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe floated the idea of joining the US Navy's freedom-of-navigation patrols in the South China Sea.
Another example is Japan's push to sell submarines to Australia and Vietnam. These actions are viewed as hostile by China, which sees a militarily revived Japan joining the US and regional powers such as Vietnam in a strategy of containment and encirclement designed to keep China's near seas from Chinese naval dominance.
Hence China's sharp and immediate suggestion to Japan that any involvement in the South China Sea would have very dangerous consequences for the two nations' disagreement in the East China Sea. It is difficult to predict how scenarios in the multi-player chess game involving these two seas will unfold. Australia is already a participant - not least through freedom-of-navigation air patrols in support of the US - and has an enormous stake in the peaceful and free-passage nature of the seas being maintained.
The key point is that for Australia our Asia-Pacific region not only offers us an obviously huge and growing economic opportunity. Strategic challenges and hard choices inevitably also lie ahead. We must balance our vital economic interests and continuing constructive enmeshment with China and the broader region with our enduring values and essential security interests, including by giving maximum support to the US-led liberal international order. How we achieve this is another topic altogether.Mark Chiba is group chairman and partner of The Longreach Group, a private equity investment firm focused on Japan and China. The views expressed in this article are entirely his own.