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China seethes at US-Japan
'meddling'
By Jing-dong Yuan
Beijing views the latest US-Japan security
statement as an encroachment on China's
sovereignty and meddling in its internal affairs
because of its references to the Taiwan Strait and
its call for transparency in China's military
affairs.
United States Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld hosted Japanese Minister for Foreign
Affairs Nobutaka Machimura and Minister for
Defense and Director General of the Defense Agency
Yoshinori Ohno last weekend in Washington for the
Security Consultative Committee meeting - the
first since December 2002. The two sides issued a
joint statement after the one-day consultation
that for the first time included "the peaceful
resolution of issues concerning the Taiwan Strait
through dialogue" and called for China's military
transparency among US-Japan common strategic
objectives, along with a peaceful resolution of
the North Korean nuclear issue.
The joint
statement incurred strong condemnation from the
Chinese government. Its Foreign Ministry spokesman
told a press conference that Beijing "resolutely
opposes the United States and Japan in issuing any
bilateral document concerning China's Taiwan,
which meddles in the internal affairs of China,
and hurts China's sovereignty".
The
Chinese objection came on the heels of its protest
last week in response to US Central Intelligence
Agency Director Porter Goss' testimony at the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, where he
pointed out that "Beijing's military modernization
and military buildup is tilting the balance of
power in the Taiwan Strait" and that "improved
Chinese military capabilities threaten US forces
in the region". At another hearing before the
Senate Armed Services Committee, Rumsfeld also
voiced concerns over the expansion of China's
navy.
What alarmed Beijing is what it
views as the unprecedented clarity with which
Washington and Tokyo define their security
interests and security perimeter in the region,
which now clearly includes the Taiwan Strait. This
is seen by China as exceeding the jurisdiction of
a bilateral US-Japan security pact, whose original
objective was the defense of Japan. While the
US-Japan joint statement issued last weekend also
made a point to "develop a cooperative
relationship with China, welcoming the country to
play a responsible and constructive role
regionally as well as globally", the spat and
misunderstanding that could arise from this
development could cast a shadow over the long-term
stability in the region.
Beijing's strong
reaction to a significant extent reflects the
divergent perspectives of China on the one hand,
and the US and Japan on the other, over the future
of the region's security architecture, and their
mutual suspicion and concerns over each other's
long-term intentions.
Over the years,
Chinese attitudes toward the US-Japan alliance
have shifted from outright condemnation and
opposition in the 1960s, to tacit acquiescence in
the 1970s and 1980s, to growing criticism since
the end of the Cold War. Beijing was highly
critical of the April 1996 US-Japan Joint
Declaration on Security and the September 1997
US-Japanese Defense Cooperation Guidelines. While
in the past the alliance in Beijing's eyes served
a useful purpose of keeping Tokyo from seeking
re-militarization, it is now increasingly viewed
as a security threat, since Washington wants a
robust Japanese military ready to be deployed for
combat.
Three issues in particular concern
China:
First, Beijing considers the revitalized
US-Japan military alliance as part of Washington's
containment strategy against China. After all, the
alliance was established during the Cold War years
with the defense of Japanese territories as its
primary mission. Now the Cold War has ended, the
very raison d'etre - protecting Japan from Soviet
aggression - no longer exists. The US-Japan
alliance therefore reflects the old Cold War
mentality and actually justifies and facilitates
continued US military presence in the region with
unmistakably clear objectives: to maintain
American primacy against China as a potential
future adversary.
Second, the new defense guidelines extend the
alliance's defense perimeter to include the Taiwan
Strait. China is understandably concerned with the
possible intervention of the US-Japan alliance in
what it regards as its internal affairs and
re-unification plans of island and mainland. While
Tokyo's ambiguity regarding its defense perimeter,
based not on geography but on events, was always a
concern for China and raised Beijing's suspicions,
the explicit inclusion of the Taiwan Strait in
US-Japan common strategic objectives indicates to
Beijing Tokyo's growing likelihood of siding with
the US in a potential military conflict over
Taiwan. This would be contrary to the Japanese
constitution that prohibits its participation in
collective defense and restricts its role in
international security affairs. Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi and his ruling Liberal
Democratic Party seek to amend Article 9 of the
constitution to allow for a more muscular military
active outside Japan.
Third, the revitalized alliance allows the
Japanese Self-Defense Force to take on additional
responsibilities. Beijing is increasingly worried
that a more assertive Japan actively involved in
the region's security affairs and seeking to be a
"normal" power will emerge as a result of the
US-Japan accord. The new Japanese defense
guidelines and the recent defense white paper in
effect give Japan the green light to go beyond the
original mandate exclusively of self-defense to a
broader collective defense function, therefore
providing justification for Japan to intervene in
regional security affairs. Japan already has one
of the largest defense budgets in the world and
has a reasonably sized (given its Peace
Constitution) but best-equipped military in the
region. In addition, Japan's industrial and
technological wherewithal will provide it with
ready resources should it decide to become a great
military power at short notice, including the
acquisition of nuclear weapons.
Beijing's
outright objection to the US-Japan joint
statement's inclusion of the Taiwan issue must be
understood in the broader context of the
challenges and opportunities it faces today. On
the one hand, the end of the Cold War has provided
the window of opportunity most conducive for China
to focus on economic development, with sustained
high growth rates over the past 15 years. Using
most economic indicators such as gross domestic
product growth rates, international trade and
foreign investment, and the purchasing power
parity indices, China is now ranked among the
world's largest, and fast-growing economies.
Beijing has improved its bilateral relations with
almost all the countries on its periphery and
resolved some or all of the territorial disputes
and boundary issues with Russia, the three Central
Asian republics of the former Soviet Union
(Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan), and
Vietnam.
On the other hand, China is
confronted with serious external challenges. The
security environment presents much uncertainty and
growing risks. The most imminent could be a
potential crisis or even outright military
confrontation across the Taiwan Strait as Beijing
insists on unification under the one-China
principle while the Taiwan government of Chen
Shui-bian continues to move toward Taiwan
identity-building, with a long-term agenda for de
jure independence.
While Sino-US relations
appear in their best form in three decades at the
moment, the long-term prospect of peaceful
coexistence will depend on how Washington and
Beijing view and assess each other's strategic
intentions and whether they can manage their
differences over the future security architecture
in Asia, disputes over trade and human rights,
and, of course, the Taiwan issue.
Finally,
China and Japan also have to come to terms over
the historical legacies, unresolved territorial
disputes, and growing mutual suspicions of and
hostility toward each other as the two Asian
powers compete for recognition and leadership in
East Asia.
Given these scenarios, it is
not difficult to understand why Beijing is
reacting so strongly to US-Japan "meddling" in
China's internal affairs. The stakes could not be
higher. East Asia's security and stability will
remain fragile if the three most powerful states
are divided by their fundamental differences over
the region's critical security issues. It is high
time that Beijing, Tokyo, and Washington began
strategic dialogues and security consultation
aimed at dispelling misunderstanding, promoting
mutual trust and confidence building, and avoiding
future military conflicts.
Dr
Jing-dong Yuan is research director of the
East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Center
for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute
of International Studies in California, where he
is also an associate professor of international
policy studies.
(Copyright 2005 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.)
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