COMMENT China, Japan set a confrontation
course By Roberto Savio
SAN SALVADOR, Bahamas - The victory of the
Liberal Democratic Party in the Japanese
elections, with Shinzo Abe coming back as prime
minister after five years out of the post, will
probably mean an escalation of tensions with
China. Both countries are embarking on a fresh
burst of nationalism, but for different reasons.
Japan is suffering from an economic and
political crisis. The economy is stagnating, and
Abe will be heading the sixth
government in five years. His
party had been in power almost with interruption
since the end of World War II, until he resigned
abruptly in 2007 for serious health reasons.
The Japanese tried for a change, and in
2009 put in power the Democratic Party of Japan
(DPJ), which went through three prime ministers in
just three years. The DPJ has been a terrible
administrator and its handling of the nuclear
disaster and tsunami in 2011 has been completely
incomprehensible.
During a visit to Japan
earlier this year, I heard from refugees housed in
a large camp in the north that they had not seen
an official in 18 months. In the meantime, Abe
found a medicine that worked and made his
comeback, largely thanks to the debacle of the
DPJ. But nothing has changed - Japan has an old
prime minister with a new medicine, but there are
no new ideas or new leaders.
What is new
is that the tide in Japan has shifted in the
direction of nationalism. Not only is Abe a hawk
who has always minimized Japanese aggression in
Asia, even denying the enslavement of Korean women
as prostitutes for the Japanese army. More
seriously, he wants to eliminate Article 19 of the
constitution, which forbids Japan from having an
army for offensive purposes and commits the
country to peace. This can only come about through
a referendum and, lately, the citizens of three of
the largest Japanese cities have elected
right-wing mayors.
The economic crisis is
bringing the usual escape from reality, with
politicians claiming that they will go back to the
old good days and people wanting to believe that
this is possible - "All we need is a strong
leader, forget the economy, globalization and
other structural problems".
Rising
nationalism in China has totally different roots.
Xi Jinping, who is set to become China's new
president in March 2013, has much more power than
in past transitions but knows well that the idea
of communism is no longer vital and that he has to
come up with some popular idea for rallying the
people behind him. So he speaks about fu
xing, the idea of "renewal", which has always
been a strong element in Chinese history, and he
associates that with the "Chinese dream".
His speeches have mixed bolder economic
policies with anti-corruption measures, a vigorous
military build-up and a muscular foreign policy.
The Chinese have not forgotten the humiliation of
the two opium wars in the 19th century, when the
Western powers used arms to impose their right to
sell opium freely in China during the Qing
dynasty.
Beside the use of fu xing
in his speeches, it is worth noting that two
months before his election in November as general
secretary of China's Communist Party Xi was
appointed as head of a powerful inter-agency group
high up in the Chinese government to oversee
maritime disputes. And it was during Xi's tenure
that the conflict over the Diaoyu-Senkaku islands
flared up.
The islands were originally
Chinese, but in 1895 were annexed by Japan during
the first Sino-Japanese war (another Chinese
humiliation), amid general indifference. But some
years ago, a geological survey found that the
islands could have deposits of gas and oil. The
ultra-nationalist governor of Tokyo, Shintaro
Ishihara, wanted to buy those three barren and
uninhabited islands from their private Japanese
owner as a sign of Japanese muscle. To outsmart
Ishihara, Japan's outgoing prime minister,
Yoshihiko Noda, bought them for the government.
This, of course, met with a sharp Chinese response
and enormous mass demonstrations, which, while
allowed by the government, were basically
spontaneous. Since then, boats from both countries
have been to the islands in a show of sovereignty.
Then, on December 13, on the eve of the
Japanese elections, a Chinese plane flew over the
islands, with five Japanese F-15 fighter jets sent
to intercept it.
As the late Tarzi
Vittachi [1] famously said, "Everything is always
about something else". In this case, it is about
the consequences of the United Nations Convention
on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), concluded in 1982,
which basically gives countries "economic
exclusive rights" to an area lying within a
distance of up to 200 kilometers from their
coasts. Because of its many islands (Minami,
Ogasawaram, Izu) situated 2,000 kilometers from
Tokyo, Japan thus has an exclusive maritime zone
of 4.5 million square kilometers, the
ninth-largest in the world.
China, with
more coast than Japan, has only 880,000 square
kilometers, ranking 31st in the world, between the
Maldives and Somalia. Furthermore, China is
blocked by the maritime zones of the United States
(islands such as Guam, Palau, Caroline, etc), the
Philippines and South Korea.
Let us add
that President Barack Obama has announced that, by
2016, 60% of the US fleet will be at sea around
China. This will include six aircraft carriers and
all the most advanced weapons, from nuclear
submarines to electronic shields, formally
deployed against North Korea (but, in fact,
against China).
And, in the dispute
between China and Japan, while it has called for
peace and diplomacy, Washington has also made
clear that in the event of conflict it considers
itself obliged to intervene in favor of Japan, by
virtue of the mutual defense treaty that both
countries signed in 1960.
This kind of
conflict between China and Japan should actually
be resolved by the Association of Southeast
Nations (ASEAN), in which the United States is an
observer. But ASEAN is irremediably split over
China, with some countries like Cambodia so
dependent on Chinese aid that they block any
attempt to regulate China.
There are
maritime disputes among nearly all countries in
this part of the world: the Philippines, Vietnam,
Taiwan, Korea, Japan, China, Brunei and Russia all
have unresolved issues of sovereignty over
islands. But it is unmistakable that China is
ready to confront others.
In its latest
passport, China has printed a map of Asia in which
it lays claim to practically all of the South
China Sea. The Philippines has refused to stamp
the passport and, on the eve of the Japanese
elections, its minister of foreign affairs
declared that his country "would very much
welcome" a change of the Japanese constitution,
allowing Tokyo once again to become a military
power and this from a major victim of Japanese
invasion during the Second World War.
All
the signs point in the direction of this dispute
over three barren islands becoming a major element
in the realignment of geopolitics in the near
future. When will humankind ever be free from the
specter of confrontation and war?
Note: 1. Senior official
with UNFPA and UNICEF.
Roberto
Savio is founder and president emeritus of the
Inter Press Service news agency and publisher of
Other News.
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