Slowly But Surely, China-Japan Ties Deepening
By Tim Shorrock
WASHINGTON, Dec 14 (IPS) — Despite the friction between China and Japan, some Asian scholars believe that the two nations are slowly building a framework for economic and political cooperation that could provide the underpinnings for long-term stability in the Asia-Pacific region.
In particular, scholars say, the rapid expansion of Sino-Japanese trade and the surprising evolution of cultural ties between Japan and the Asian mainland are softening anti-Japanese feelings within China and convincing many Japanese that closer ties with China may work to their benefit.
In an important milestone last year, Japanese trade with China reached 168 billion US dollars, allowing China to replace the United States as Japan's largest trading partner for the first time since World War II.
Also in 2004, Beijing hosted the world 'manga summit,' an annual event that draws hundreds of people involved in this popular Japa nese art form. Moreover, the universal draw of manga has made the study of Japanese language increasingly popular in Chinese colleges and universities.
"I now sense that the bedrock of pro-Japanese sentiment has been formed in China, especially in the urban society," said Takahara Akio, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of Tokyo and a visiting scholar at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University.
As for Japanese sentiment towards China, "I can safely say that the common sense in Japan now is that the Japanese economy has been more or less lifted by the rise of China and the so-called Chinese economic threat is hardly perceived any more," Akio added. He noted that one million Chinese workers are directly employed by Japanese companies in China, and another 9.2million employed by Japanese subcontractors.
Yang Bojiang, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution who follows Sino-Japanese relation s as a director of the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, agreed that a thaw in bilateral relations is coming. But he argued that, in both countries, the public has been pushing their respective governments to take more confrontational stands while their leaders have been acting behind the scenes to ease tensions.
"China is trying hard to improve relations," he said, particularly in regard to North Korea. In recent years, after Japanese diplomats told their counterparts in China that they wanted more understanding of North Korea's admitted abduction of Japanese citizens, Beijing responded, he said, and "Japan is getting more and more cooperation" on this issue. For those reasons, "I'm cautiously optimistic."
Akio and Yang spoke recently at a Washington forum sponsored by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA.
Some events over the past year seem to contradict their sentiments. They include a wave of anti-Japanese demons trations in Chinese cities, the repeated and controversial visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, and the buzz among Chinese and Japanese security specialists about the perceived military threat from each other's growing armed forces.
Beijing was also offended this year when the Japanese government joined the U.S. administration in identifying security in the Taiwan Strait as a "common strategic objective" that falls under the terms of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty. Tensions between Beijing and Tokyo reached a boiling point in October, when the Chinese government cancelled a visit to Beijing by Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura over the Yasukuni visits.
High-level talks between Tokyo and Beijing have yet to resume.
The problem posed to the region by Sino-Japanese tensions has also been a key topic of discussion at this week's East Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur. The summit, which at Chin a's initiative has pointedly rejected the participation of the U.S., will attempt to create a new framework for East Asian economic and political cooperation.
Still, there were signs at the summit that China and Japan are taking steps to ease the tension. Speaking at a press conference before the meeting began, Chinese Premier Wen Jiaboa reiterated China's view that the "root cause" for the downturn in ties with Japan was Prime Minister Koizumi's failure to face up to history by visiting Yasukuni, where Japan's war dead are commemorated along with scores of Japan's war criminals.
But Wen also said that building stable ties between China and Japan remained Beijing's "unswerving policy" and reflects the fundamental interests of both nations. "This policy has never changed even in the most difficult times," he said.
As Wen was in Malaysia, Seiji Maehara, the president of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, was visiting Beijing to discuss ways to improve bilateral ties that he said had been damaged by Koizumi's actions.
Maehara, who was invited to China by the ruling Communist Party, described Sino-Japanese relations as "the basis for peace and stability of Asia" and proposed that both governments establish a panel to improve ties and discuss mutual issues including the environment, energy and epidemics.
In a speech, he urged Koizumi to stop visiting Yasukuni Shrine and observed that the prime minister's insistence that these were only "personal" visits had made Japan's relationship to China "abnormal."
Back at the Washington forum, Steven Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and an expert on U.S.-Japan relations, argued that a serious easing of tensions between Japan and China will be difficult until Tokyo becomes more independent of the United States.
Japan's reliance on Washington, he said, was underscored by the joint U.S.-Japanese declaration on Taiwan, which was announced the same month that Japan emerged as China's largest trading partner. "So it was almost a declaration that, despite the high level of economic engagement with China, Japan was still in the American camp."
In what Clemons called a welcome break from the past, Japanese politicians no longer claim their legitimacy by proclaiming their pacifism against potential enemies but by embracing a "new nationalism" that includes a military role for Japan, albeit within the confines of its bilateral treaty with the U.S.
But Clemons added that he was "worried about a Japan that continues to identify itself, its character and constraints entirely in terms of what the U.S. does and does not do".
That could prove destabilizing, both to the U.S. and China, he said. "In the long run that sense of being a supplicant or a vessel to American interests could backfire very badly on American interests, where the source of (Japanese) legitimacy would depend on how anti-American they are," he said. (Inter Press Service)
