The fourth ally in World War II alongside the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union against the Axis powers (Germany, Italy and Japan) was China. As Jean-Pierre Lehmann points out in one of our leads this week: the Chinese alliance with the United States ‘has been airbrushed from history’. China fought valiantly and suffered hugely in the war against Japan, a fact which still shapes the conduct of Northeast Asian diplomacy today.

‘Had the Chinese not kept up the war with Japan in the Pacific’, Lehmann points out, ‘the US would not have been able to concentrate its military efforts on the Atlantic. Only after the war was won in Europe was the US able to hop across the Pacific, capture Iwo Jima in February 1945 and Okinawa in April, drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, and force Tokyo’s unconditional surrender. In a bizarre twist — after China and the US had suffered at Japanese hands — the positions of the two East Asian countries vis-à-vis the US were reversed: Japan became the ally, China fell from grace’.

But is the resurrection of an alliance relationship between China and the United States totally out of the question?

All the hoopla about President Obama’s visit to Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines last week threw into high relief questions about the nature of established US alliance relationships in the Pacific. Mr Obama’s affirmation that the United States was bound under Article 5 of the US–Japan Security Treaty to defend the status quo of Japanese administration of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands — at the same time as asserting that the US did not take sides in the dispute — touched a raw historical nerve, particularly in light of the fact that these territories were ceded to Japan in 1971 as part of the reversion of Okinawa following its American post-war occupation.

Japan, of course, is unwilling to admit that there is any dispute about the sovereignty of the islands, so the American security guarantee provides, in effect, a guarantee for Japanese sovereignty over them. This affronts the Chinese, and their sentiment does not appear entirely unfounded, since Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 gentlemen’s agreement with Japan to put resolution of the question of sovereignty over the islands on hold for a later generation would seem to imply Japanese recognition of a dispute.

So why did President Obama wade in behind Japan on this question? Sino–Japanese relations are probably at their lowest point in recent times, owing to raised tensions in the East China Sea since Japan’s September 2012 nationalisation of three of the five islets that make up the disputed island group.

In another essay this week, Bhubhindar Singh posits reasonably that ‘first, Obama’s bold statement was an erudite calculation that was an attempt to gain leverage over Japan in outstanding bilateral issues; and second, it [aimed] to restore stability in the East China Sea through eradicating ambiguity in the US role in support of Japan in the event of any conflict over the islands’. Certainly Obama’s visit clearly affirmed the alliance relationship with Japan (and re-established a US footprint in the Philippines). But far from simply giving leash to Abe and his colleagues on the islands dispute, Obama’s statement of US interest in it served to rein Abe in. America cannot be held hostage to the domestic politics of its alliance partners in Japan, the Philippines or anywhere else on its other core relationships, and especially that with China.

Does this positioning mean that Washington has quelled all doubts about whether America really was willing to use ‘all the elements of American power’ to resist China’s challenge to the regional status quo based on US leadership in Asia? When posed in these stark terms, as Hugh White does in another essay this week, the answer is surely no. White goes on to argue that ‘Obama will only be able to preserve the status quo if he really can convince Beijing that he is willing to go to war with China rather than see the US step back from regional leadership. And he will not be able to convince Beijing of that unless he really believes it himself’.

Perhaps, but there is an alternative and possibly more plausible and nuanced interpretation of where things stand between the United States and China, that rests on both a more subtle view of where Chinese interests lie in the dispute with Japan (on which Washington has clearly displayed contextual sympathy) and where United States and Chinese interests now stand in their own relationship.

China’s stated aim is to resolve territorial issues peacefully. It sees the status quo on the dispute over the Senkakus/Diaoyus as having been disturbed by Japan. And it recognises that ‘it is difficult for the United States to change its basic principles in dealing with [regional] territorial issues’, and understands that the US will maintain pressure on both China and Japan, and the other parties in disputes, in order to prevent these problems from getting out of control.

There is a huge amount at stake, both economically and strategically, in their bilateral relationship for both the United States and China. It is undoubtedly the most important of their bilateral relationships for both countries. While it is both premature and inappropriate to frame the emergence of a more and more tightly structured and managed bilateral relationship between the two countries as an alliance relationship (particularly absent close military ties, as is still the case), it is not in any way fanciful to see the relationship already developing many of the key characteristics of an alliance partnership. Certainly the current Chinese leadership is telling itself both that the relationship with the United States is its top priority and that to make it so was its most important external achievement in its first year.

Peter Drysdale is Editor of the East Asia Forum.