For
China to apologize is like the sun rising in the west.
It just doesn't happen. But it did last week.
It is taboo
in most diplomacy, especially in China, to say "I'm sorry"
or to apologize because that would be admitting that
a great sovereign nation had done something wrong.
But lo and behold, China came very close last
week when Japan demanded an apology for a Chinese submarine
intrusion, and after stonewalling for days, China
finally came up with a diplomatic formulation involving
the word "sorry" for the submarine that it
said accidentally strayed into Japanese territorial
waters. Japan interpreted that as constituting an
apology.
China watchers know how rare it is
for China to even come close to admitting it has erred.
Apologies to the Chinese people are virtually unknown. China, however, wants apologies
from Japan for its invasion and atrocities in China during
World War II. Beijing's carefully formulated submarine "sorry"
reminds one of the Dowager Empress (also known
as Tsu Hsi's) famous, or infamous words: "I'd rather
give it [compensation and land concessions]
to foreigners than to my minions at home." Generous to the
foreign powers but arrogant to her own people at
the same time - and even today
Chinese people are denied the right to know what's really
going on. The remark is believed to have been made by the
empress when cracking down on the 1898 reform movement that
asked for limited freedom.
"Did the sun rise in the
west today?" is a common Chinese expression to describe
something very uncommon, rare or even unthinkable.
Indeed, few people were prepared to look up in the sky
during daybreak on November 16 when the Chinese
government offered an apology of sorts to Japan over the
Chinese submarine that intruded in Japanese waters.
A week earlier on November 10, Japanese naval
patrols spotted an unidentified submarine in their
territorial waters off Okinawa. A large-scale,
high-profile search and monitor operation was launched.
Alarm sounded across Japanese media about the first
foreign intrusion on the sea since the sinking of a
North Korean spy ship in December 2001. Japanese
authorities claimed that the submarine was a Chinese
Han-class submarine and demanded an apology from China
for violating Japanese territorial waters. For the next
few days, China remained silent. When pressed, the
Chinese Embassy would only repeat the standard issue
response: "We don't know but will tell you when we
know."
Then a rare thing happened. On November
16, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei told the
Japanese ambassador in Beijing that indeed the submarine
was Chinese. He said it was on a training mission but
veered off course into Japanese waters for "technical
reasons", presumably some mechanical or human error.
Japan said China's official response also contained an
official apology, because "the word 'sorry' was used" by
the Chinese side.
China's Foreign Ministry,
however, was more circumspect about the matter. At a
news conference a foreign ministry spokesperson said the
issue was settled through diplomatic channels. Whether
or not the "s" word equaled apology, the "a" word, China
would not elaborate for the outside world, despite
requests for clarification from foreign journalists at a
regular briefing in Beijing. All that the spokesperson
said was that "China has already informed Japan on the
relevant matter, and the issue has been properly
addressed".
In reality, such equivocal language
from China is already preferred for external
consumption. The foreign ministry's official website did
not even print its spokesperson's own circumspect
statements. The mainland press, as usual, observed a
collective silence over both the incident and its
aftermath. Some blissfully ignorant newspapers bristled
at the notion that a Chinese submerged warship would
ever enter a neighbor's backyard. On the same day that
the government owned up, China's National Defense
Knowledge News accused Japan of "using the as yet
unidentified submarine as an excuse to whip up the hype
about 'the theory of threat from China' in order to beef
up its defense and strengthen the United States and
Japan military alliance".
If only Beijing cared
to make itself more transparent to its own citizens,
they would know that this was not the first time China's
submarines had shown up in Japanese waters. One year ago
nearly to the day, a Japanese sea patrol plane spotted
and then tailed a Chinese Ming-Class diesel attack
submarine as the latter passed through Osumi Strait
north of Okinawa.
The habit of Chinese
submarines sailing near Japan in November for two
consecutive years serves, if anything, to lend
credibility to the "China threat theory", instead of
diffusing it. China should have contained its anger
then, when Japan's newly revamped National Defense
Program reportedly set out three scenarios whereby China
might commence hostilities against Japan. They are:
1) When conflict flares up over rights to ocean
resources 2) When disputes about the sovereignty of
Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands escalates dramatically 3) When
a war in the Taiwan Strait spills over. Conversely, it
is equally probable that China deliberately intended the
sighting of its straying submarines: threatening Japan
into concessions at bilateral talks and deterring it
from taking sides in case of a war across the Taiwan
Strait.
The implications are anything but
submerged and not limited to the military, since
China-Japan political relations have been severely
strained lately. As Japan's foreign minister testified
November 12 before the Diet, or parliament, an exchange
of visits by heads of state between the two countries is
on hold apparently because Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi regularly visits the Yasukuni Shrine. To China,
the shrine to Japan's fallen war heroes, including
convicted class-a war criminals, is an insult because
war criminals like Hideki Tojo are honored at the altar.
Then, further inhibiting better ties, there is the
competing demand for crude oil. After China lost out to
Japan in securing supplies from Russia's far east
fields, bilateral China-Japan talks on the exploration
of oil resources in the East China Sea also stalled last
month in Beijing, as neither China nor Japan could
afford to give an inch. Both sides believe their
respective economic survival is at stake in competing
territorial claims over marine resources.
Of
course, no analysis is complete without a conspiracy
theory or two. Just like all other under-informed
Chinese, foreign ministry officials might be kept in the
dark by the Chinese Defense Ministry, unwilling to
divulge a military secret. Further stretching the
imagination, this "accidental" submarine incursion
coincided with Chinese President Hu Jingtao's 13-day
trip to Latin America for the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation meetings, plus bilateral visits along the
way and on the sidelines of the conference. It is an old
trick in a power struggle to pull stunts like this in
order to make enemies look bad.
Or perhaps it is
nothing more complicated than a plain, unfortunate
accident. The Chinese submarine may simply have lost its
way due to navigational errors. It happens not
infrequently. In April 2003, one Chinese submarine
failed to re-surface because of "mechanical failures",
killing all 70 hands on board. So, if the United States
found it possible to say "sorry" for bombing the Chinese
embassy in Belgrade in May 1999, due to an alleged
mapping error, an apology shouldn't be so difficult for
a faulty compass.
While the submarine incident
is wide open to different diplomatic, military and
economic interpretations, the embarrassment to Beijing
is undeniable. Just when China is getting more adamant
about asserting its inviolable territorial integrity in
connection with its claim on Taiwan, it admitted
intruding on another country's territorial waters. The
act, accidental or purposeful, and the "sorry" note,
sincere or contrived, are unprecedented. Can anyone
remember if Beijing has ever apologized for anything at
all before? The sun does rise in the west once in a blue
moon.
Li YongYan is in analyst of
Chinese politics, economics, business and social
affairs.
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