Yanmei Xie, senior China analyst with the International Crisis Group (ICG) in Beijing, says China’s relations with its neighbors have deteriorated significantly, as the region continues to engage in an arms race.

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“Before, the region was in the process of economic integration, the building of multilateral institutions, and regional governance by consensus,” she said. “But in recent years, that has all been unraveling. In its place you have an arms race and the building-up of deterrents and the fracturing of multilateral institutions. It’s not good.”

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Xie said Beijing and Washington have radically different explanations for the deterioration in the regional security environment. “If you ask China, it’s because of the U.S. pivot to Asia. If you ask anyone else, it’s because of the emergence of a more assertive China,” she said.

Here is a look at some of the current hot spots:

Korean Peninsula

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On Monday, about 25,000 U.S. troops began annual military exercises with South Korea, a move that has prompted warnings of retaliation from North Korea. China’s state news agency, Xinhua, joined the condemnation on Monday, saying the move would “jeopardize peace and stability in Northeast Asia” and could even inadvertently provoke a real war.

Xinhua said U.S. “muscle-flexing” and South Korea’s resolve to counter its northern neighbor will “lead to a vicious circle of violence for violence” and warned that “improper handling” of the military drills could lead to fighting.

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The U.S.-led U.N. Command Military Armistice Commission said it had notified the North Korean army that the drills were “non-provocative” in nature. But North Korea, as it often has in the past, denounced them as preparation for invasion and threatened a preemptive nuclear strike.

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“The nuclear warmongers should bear in mind that if they show the slightest sign of aggression, it would turn the stronghold of provocation into a heap of ashes," a North Korean army spokesman said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

Tensions are running high, with China objecting fiercely to the deployment of a sophisticated U.S. missile defense system to South Korea.

China says the deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) unit will harm regional stability. Beijing is worried that the system could be used to monitor and counter not only North Korea but also China's missiles. In July, the Defense Ministry in Beijing said it was pressing ahead with tests for its anti-missile system.

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South China Sea

Chinese coast guard ships conducted live-firing exercises Monday in the Gulf of Tonkin, a body of water between northern Vietnam and southern China, the latest military drill in the area since an arbitration panel in The Hague invalidated much of China’s claims to the disputed waters of the South China Sea. China also plans military exercises with Russia in the South China Sea next month, a move that the United States said would harm regional stability.

“There are other places those exercises could have been conducted,” Adm. Scott Swift, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, said on a visit to China this month. “So I think that is a matter of concern that should be considered from the perspective of actions that are not increasing stability in the region.”

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Meanwhile, China has continued to develop its outposts on the disputed Spratly Islands, despite the arbitration panel ruling, as it seeks to change the facts on the ground, experts say.

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Satellite photos released by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington showed that China was in the process of building reinforced hangars beside the three runways it has constructed in the Spratlys, with space for 24 fighter jets and three to four larger planes.

East China Sea

China also staged military exercises in the Sea of Japan last week, including a simulated bomber attack on a naval task force, the military said. The Sea of Japan is also known as the East Sea.

Indeed, a mild rapprochement between Japan and China has unraveled in recent weeks, partly a spillover in tensions from the South China Sea. That is partly because Beijing objected to Tokyo’s support for the ruling issued in The Hague, ICG’s Xie said.

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Even before the ruling was announced, Beijing’s ambassador to Tokyo warned Japan that it would “cross a red line” if its Self Defense Forces took part in U.S.-led “freedom of navigation” exercises in the South China Sea, the Kyodo news agency reported.

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China, Xie says, resents it when the United States plays a role in the South China Sea but can just about accept it. However, the Communist Party is much less able to appear “weak-kneed” in front of a domestic audience when it comes to responding to criticism from Tokyo, she said.

Now, the tension appears to be spilling over into the East China Sea.

China has objected to Japan’s reported plans to deploy new surface-to-ship missiles to islands in the East China Sea.

Japan, in turn, lodged protests this month after Chinese fishing and coast guard vessels intruded in what Tokyo considers to be its territorial waters around disputed islands known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.