Japan, China, U.S. Ties at High Point
Analysis by Tim Shorrock
WASHINGTON — On Sunday, Feb. 8, dozens of troops from the Japanese Self-Defence Forces crossed the Kuwaiti frontier into Iraq. The troops, who arrived in a long convoy of armoured vehicles, trucks, personnel carriers and an ambulance, are the first of a contingent of around 800 personnel Japan has sent to support the U.S. occupation force in Iraq.
A few years ago, the sight of soldiers carrying the Japanese flag in any country would have aroused deep suspicion and anger in China, where memories burn deep of a previous invasion in the 1930s that laid waste to much of the Chinese countryside and led to countless deaths and tremendous suffering by the Chinese people.
Moreover, the deepening of Japan's military alliance with the United States would have generated strong protests from a government that has recently as 1999 was condemning those ties and trying to split the U.S.-Japan alliance.
But the Sep. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, the U.S.-led war on terror, and the resurgence of China's economy have altered the political landscape in Asia and dramatically changed the dynamics of China's relations with the United States and Japan.
Today, despite differences over the status of Taiwan, lingering ultra-nationalism in Japan and other issues, China's ties with both Washington and Tokyo are closer than they have ever been.
And with China taking the initiative with North Korea and the Bush administration talking about changing the U.S. force structure in Asia, those ties can only improve in the next few years, experts believe.
"Nine-eleven brought about a new horizon in U.S.-China cooperation," said Makoto Iokibe, a professor of political and diplomatic history at Kobe University's Graduate School of Law. "Chinese foreign policy is basically cooperative with the United States and friendly to Japan."
China's "muted reaction" to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and its critical role in organizing the six-nation talks on North Korea, he continued, signal that Beijing's new leaders have decided that their interests will be served by closer ties with the Bush administration and the Koizumi government in Tokyo.
"China is willing to take the initiative to stabilise international relations in East Asia," Iokibe told a seminar on Sino-Japanese relations organised by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Washington earlier in February.
China's initiative on North Korea "marked the beginning of China's effort, not only to cooperate with the United States but to play an important role in the formation of international order," Iokibe said. His comments carry weight because he is also chairman of a Japanese government commission that is studying 'Japan's Goals in the 21st Century' for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
China's acceptance of Japan's overseas deployments is all the more remarkable because Japan's role in the U.S. war on terror -- providing rear support to the war with its Maritime SDF and providing economic support to Iraq and Afghanistan - mirrors Japan's junior role to the United States during the Cold War.
"A kind of division of labour between the United States and Japan has become very clear," said Iokibe. "The military effort to restore the peace structure in the world is America's responsibility. But Japan will make good efforts for economic restructuring and restoration after the end of the war."
Minxin Pei, the co-director of the China programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former faculty member at Princeton University, said China's economic expansion has put Beijing in a much stronger position in Asia and allowed Beijing to improve its bargaining position with both the United States and Japan.
If that continues over the decade or two, a deeper reconciliation with Japan could convince the United States that its forward-deployed military forces in Asia are no longer necessary.
"You're not going to see 100,000 (U.S.) troops in East Asia," he said. Because the U.S. deployment is in part a "tool to balance Japan with China," if China can "reconcile with Japan, there will be no such need" for a large U.S. military presence, he said.
Not all is rosy between China and Japan, however. The Chinese public and many intellectuals were angered recently by the boorish behaviour of a group of Japanese businessmen on a "sex tour" in southern China.
Memories of the war were rekindled last summer when dozens of Chinese citizens became ill from World War II-era mustard gas uncovered in Heilongjiang province. Chinese officials also continue to express astonishment at Prime Minister Koizumi's continued visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, where many Japanese soldiers and war criminals are buried.
"After each visit to Yasukuni, Koizumi would claim that he was praying for peace," a commentator for Xinhuanet, a government news service, wrote recently. "Praying for peace by idolising the war criminals who destroyed peace, whose hands were blotted with the blood of peoples of China and other Asian countries? What kind of logic is this!"
When Chinese officials ask him about Yasukuni, said Iokibe, he tells them that Koizumi has no animus toward China but is trying to shore up his domestic base of support, particularly among conservatives in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Koizumi also has relatives buried at the site, he said.
Iokibe admitted, however, that nationalism is on the rise in Japan. Japan's prolonged recession and economic crisis "injured Japanese pride" and fed into a growing "anti-foreignism," he said. While it sometimes takes the form of anti-U.S. or anti-Korean sentiment, "anti-Chinese is the most conspicuous," he said. (Inter Press Service)
