North Korea launches ballistic missile across northern Japan, falls into sea

[Anomalocaris]

If only it was as simple as Trump making a fool of himself I wouldn't be bothered much, I am already used to him embarrassing himself every single day, but if for some reason, let's say a fox anchor suggests for him to nuke NK and be immortalized in history, you better believe he'll go ahead and do it... I feel it is too much of a risk to let two toddlers play with loaded guns, someone needs to be the grownup here, and China needs to realize that while it might be amusing to watch from the sidelines, they have as much to lose as any other nation if a global war does break out!

China believes very fundamental currents, discernible only on the time scale of 50 or 100 years, very much flows in their favor.  They think by virtue of having a relatively educated and trained population that is 4 times bigger than the American population, and who have a vivid living memory of universal abject poverty and are therefore less complacent and more diligent, they will rise to the fore and completely overwhelm the United States in productivity, economic, technological and geopolitical power in the next 50-100 years simply by going with the flow.  

They think there are only a few possibly glitches that can derail them:

1.  Fighting or being drawn into a major war prematurely and losing it.

2.  Collapse of the orderly, predictable, and somewhat effective internal governance, currently provided by the communist party.

If these two things don't happen, then they believe other geopolitical set backs will all be temporary, and their negative effects will all be insignificant next to the increased strength china will gain when 4 times America's population reaches American level of productivity and technological sophistication.

So, I think we can predict what china will do because they will follow specific internal rules in their foreign policy:

1. They will resist all foreign entanglements that could result in a difficult shooting war with uncertain geopolitical consequences

2. They will not back down or compromise on any territorial claims, because doing so would hurt the credibility of the ruling communist party in the eyes of Chinese nationalists, and lead to internal dissent that can harm the continuation of a orderly, predictable, somewhat effective internal governance.

3. They will advocate free trade in ways that favor their exports, but make it difficult for foreign firm to compete for major shares of their domestic markets.

4. They will use increased access, from a base of very restricted access, to their vast and therefore highly profitable domestic markets as their preferred bargaining chips in lieu of making compromises on geopolitical issues.  Ex: If you don't cruise in the South China Sea that china claims, china will let Ford sell cars in china.

5.  They will seek to over extend the United States by not directly opposing the United States anywhere in the world outside of east Asia, but use their financial and economic influence, likely through proxy so no,paper trail leads back to Beijing,  to create situations that would require America to commit military forces to rectify.

6. The over extension of United States will gradually create a vacuum in east Asia, which china will fill with a gradual build up of military, parmarily naval and air, power.