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 Part 3: Economics overrides
anti-Japan sentiment
By Macabe
Keliher
Part 1: The dragon seizes market
share
Part 2: Replacing US in Asian export
market
BEIJING - The anniversary
of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre last December was
surprisingly subtle and subdued. In contrast to years
past, when reports and exhibitions of atrocities and
Japanese cruelty characterized the remembrance, recent
ceremonies emphasized peace and harmony. A local
children's troupe sang peace songs together with a
Japanese choir, and a "Nanjing Peace Declaration" was
read, calling on "the world's peace-loving people to
rise to protect peace and resist war".
Japan has
not been completely forgiven, to be sure, and harsh
words about never forgetting history, and inflated death
tolls, still circulate. (The 65th anniversary was
observed on December 13. Many estimates place the death
toll around 250,000-300,000.) Yet the fiery
anti-Japanese sentiment has now taken a back seat to the
practical ideals of partnership and Asian integration,
or, as the latest issue of the influential journal
Strategy and Management calls it, "new thinking on
Japan" for a "foreign-relations revolution".
In
an effort to drop the victim mentality and assume the
role of a rising nation with world-power status, China
is engineering a complete reversal of its attitude
toward Japan, aiming to cement a relationship necessary
to assume its leadership role in Asia. Where
ever-increasing demands for Japanese apologies and talk
about the "hurt feelings of the Chinese people" once
permeated Beijing-Tokyo relations, "We are now trying to
look beyond the past. The model is France and Germany in
the post-World War II world," says a high-ranking
official in Beijing's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who
asked not to be named.
In the past six months,
relations between Beijing and Tokyo have reached their
warmest temperatures in modern history. Day-to-day
contacts between governments at levels throughout the
various bureaucracies are routine. Beijing has begun to
allow Japanese citizens to visit China without applying
for visas. When Chinese President Hu Jintao and Japanese
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi met last May at the
Group of Eight conference of industrialized nations in
France, it was the first time a Chinese leader had not
publicly demanded an apology for Japan's war crimes
against China.
What followed instead was an
announcement on further cooperation and a strengthening
of relations when leaders met at the summit of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) last
October on the Indonesian island of Bali. Furthermore,
criticism of Koizumi's annual visits to Tokyo's Yakasuni
War Shrine, the last in January, has been kept to a
minimum, as has criticism of Japan's recent deployment
of troops to Iraq - events that previously would have
sparked domestic outcry and international criticism from
China. The government here even attempted to change the
name of the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum to the
Nanjing International Peace Center, but it had to back
down in the face of violent public protests. Still,
efforts are under way to reshape public opinion, but it
will take years to undo years of China's shrill
anti-Japanese propaganda.
While such real
changes are being orchestrated by the central
government, academics and influential think-tank figures
here have been pushing the ideological envelop for
closer ties with Tokyo over the past few years. Debates
began in the late 1990s as economic relations
strengthened and discussions arose about making China a
"big country" (daguo). Opinion pieces and
editorials were published, with titles such as
"Sino-Japan relations ought to have a grander vision".
These officially sanctioned pronouncements culminated in
the influential Strategy and Management journal running
a series in late 2003 about how to improve relations
with Japan. The journal of the government policy
think-tank China Institute of Contemporary International
Relations, Contemporary International Relations, devoted
the entire November 2003 issue to "The Future for
Sino-Japanese Relations"; its pages were filled with
sympathetic explanations of Koizumi's shrine visits
honoring the war dead, and calls for closer and stronger
ties.
Japan as Number 1
The official
line, of course, is still to hold Japan accountable.
"Politically Sino-Japan relations are at a low ebb,"
began one interview with a Foreign Ministry official.
"The Japanese prime minister insists on visiting the war
shrine and this hurts the feelings of the Chinese
people." Among those memorialized at the shrine are
known war criminals.
But press a little and
economics takes over.
"China normalized
relations with Japan in the 1970s, and when Japan
apologized over some of those emotional facts ... it is
the correct understanding of history," the official
continued when asked about discussions on improving
relations. "Now Japan is most important economically; it
has become the largest investor in China, and China's
diplomatic strategy is to advance a peaceful regional
environment to facilitate domestic growth. It is natural
to bring out two countries closer together. We must be
forward-looking."
Japan has become a linchpin in
China's economy. By of the end of 2002, the Japanese had
pumped in US$36.34 billion in foreign direct investment,
or 8.11 percent of China's total utilized FDI, making
Japan China's largest foreign investor, according to the
Chinese Ministry of Commerce. And by investing in
high-tech industries the Japanese also bring with them
all the requirements to upgrade China's economy in
value-added manufacturing and management. In 2002,
Chinese products became Japan's largest imports for the
first time, accounting for 18.3 percent of Japan's total
imports, surpassing United States' products, which were
17.1 percent of total imports. And China became one of
Japan's largest export markets, second only to the US.
That was the same year two-way trade between the China
and Japan first exceeded $100 billion, reaching $101.9
billion in 2002, and $120 billion in the first 11 months
of 2003.
Given the unprecedented amount of trade
between the countries, Zhao Jinping, director of the
Department for Foreign Economic Studies at the
Development Research Center of the State Council, has
been advocating a free-trade bloc comprising China,
Japan and South Korea - something unthinkable just five
years ago. "It would not take much time to complete the
process of East Asian economic integration," he said.
Precedents for China's
about-face
Furthermore, Japan is China's largest
financial donor, "more than all other governments
combined", according to Feng Zhaokuei at the Nanjing
Institute for International Relations. Feng says Japan
accounts for more than 60 percent of China's official
development assistance (ODA) received. About 25 percent
of the funding for all of China's infrastructure
projects between 1994 and 1998 - including roads,
railways, telecom systems and harbors - came from Japan,
says Feng.
This was a big factor in 1997 when
then president Jiang Zemin became the first Chinese head
of state to visit Japan. Instead of giving thanks for
the cash, however, he demanded apologies for Japan's
World War II crimes. He got none and Japan began to talk
about cutting off ODA to China.
The real pieces
are almost impossible to link together, but the puzzle
picture can be inferred. It was about this time that
Beijing began to think about how to get beyond the
apology. "Beijing came to the understanding that if it
wanted to be a leader in Asia, then it must bring in
Japan. It needs to make Japan feel part of the region,
and cannot afford to continue to isolate it," said one
European diplomat in Beijing, asking not to be
identified. Op-eds and think-tank publications began to
discuss China's regional and global role, fitting Japan
into a larger economic and security picture. "We need a
new thinking towards Japan. We need to be practical and
think from national security, not our emotions," said
Feng.
Sino-Japanese security
cooperation
One of the most important arguments
now circulating for bettering Sino-Japanese ties is the
need for security cooperation. Given its recent economic
and political developments in the region, Beijing now
finds itself in a position of advocating regional
stability and economic prosperity - as opposed to
exporting revolution, as it did in the past. Promoting
stability and economic expansion are seen as crucial for
China to assume a leadership role in Asia.
Calls
to drop the victim mentality and adopt the role of a
responsible power are carried one step further in the
security debate: "The two neighbors should make common
efforts, with a view to establish strategic relations of
historical significance, to strengthen exchanges and
mutual understanding, seek common interests, expand
cooperation, reduce contention and explore a road for
peaceful co-existence and joint development," said Sun
Cheng, research professor at the China Institute of
International Relations, a Foreign Ministry think-tank.
Such developments are part of China's long-term
strategy, says Zhou Guigen of the Nanjing Institute of
International Relations. China's "highest strategy is to
realize the greatness of the Chinese people", he wrote
in the last issue of Strategy and Management. This
involves three things: becoming a fully developed
country in the 21st century, securing peace and
stability along the borders and in the region, and
completing the assignment of unification (meaning
Taiwan). "The US is the country most capable to hinder
China in its rise," he said. "We need to take care of
those countries with essential diplomatic relations with
the US. This policy points to a diplomatic revolution in
our relations with Japan as most necessary."
Be
that as it may, the Chinese people are having a hard
time catching on. The government has invested 50 years
in nurturing anti-Japanese sentiment and is now finding
it hard to get them to embrace a land and people they
were taught to hate. The name change for the Nanjing
Massacre Memorial Museum, for instance, was protested so
furiously by residents that the government had to shelve
the idea. Recent anti-Japanese protests in Xi'an over a
mocking skit, and in Hainan over a Japanese-funded
prostitute orgy, are reminders of simmering public
resentment the government must be wary of (see The Xi'an incident: No love
affair, November 21, 2003). "The government
still must pay attention to public opinion," said the
Foreign Ministry official who spoke both of China's hurt
feelings and the need to advance Sino-Japanese
relations.
Perhaps, but Beijing has done a
fairly good job of ignoring public attitudes so far, and
given the forward momentum of political and economic
Sino-Japanese relations, it looks as though public
opinion will have to change as well.
As an
editorial in the International Herald Leader put it:
"The correct way to shape people's emotions is to use
party cooperation to facilitate a breakthrough in
Sino-Japan relations."
While this correspondent
was riding in a taxi in Shenzhen, one of China's special
economic zones, recently with a Taiwanese colleague, the
driver gave the thumbs-up sign. "Taiwanese are good,
they come invest a lot of money here. But if you were
Japanese I would kill you!" He said it a bit too
cheerily. But the Japanese invest more, no? "Yes, but
the Japanese dropped a bomb in my village and killed my
neighbor."
Macabe Keliher is an
independent historian and journalist, and a regular
contributor to Asia Times Online. His website is www.macabe.net.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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