Come back from the brink, Beijing

THE aggression that China has shown in the past few years in its vast territorial grab in the South China Sea has terrified its neighbours and set it on a collision course with America, long the guarantor of peace in East Asia. This week an international tribunal thoroughly demolished China’s vaguely defined claims to most of the South China Sea. How Beijing reacts to this verdict is of the utmost geopolitical importance. If, in its fury, China flouts the ruling and continues its creeping annexation, it will be elevating brute force over international law as the arbiter of disputes among states. China’s bullying of its neighbours greatly raises the risks of a local clash escalating into war between the century’s rising superpower and America, the current one. The stakes could hardly be higher.