Japan: Don't rock the cross-Strait boat
By Jamie Miyazaki

With just over a month to go before Taiwan goes to the polls in its first "defensive" referendum - on nearly 500 Chinese missiles targeted at the island - the rhetoric and smear campaigns from both sides of the Taiwan Strait have been heating up. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is observing cross-Strait developments with some apprehension.

Far down in the southern Japanese island of Ishigaki - less than 200 miles east of Taiwan - residents are watching the referendum more closely and nervously than most. The island's port authority is heavily dependent on the bizarre status quo of China-Taiwan cross-Strait relations. Goods shipped from mainland China to Taiwan can sail "direct", as long as they pass through nearby Ishigaki's waters, netting the port authority a US$3,000 port clearance fee per vessel; when nearly 1,000 vessels pay these fees every year, Ishigaki makes a tidy profit from its geographical location.

Nobody in Ishigaki is particularly keen on a war breaking out, or for that matter, on a sudden breakthrough in truly direct cross-Strait transport links between China and Taiwan that would eliminate the value of the port.

Ishigaki perhaps most visibly demonstrates the awkward diplomatic and strategic tightrope Japan walks when it comes to cross-Strait relations. China is the new export market of choice for Japanese companies. Nonetheless, Taiwan is Japan's fourth-largest trading partner and Japan is Taiwan's third-largest export destination and its largest source of imports. Throw in close cultural and political ties between Taiwan and Japan, Japan's considerable strategic stake in cross-Strait stability, and the three-way Tokyo-Beijing-Taipei relationship becomes trickier still.

So, it's not surprising that Tokyo's criticisms of the March 20 referendum - on the same day as the presidential election - have been more muted than those of other nations.

Japan calls for 'cool heads' to prevail
"Cool heads are needed for cross-Strait stability," said an editorial in the liberal Asahi Shimbun on February 14. "Neither Japan nor the United States - nor any of its neighboring countries in Asia - wants tension across the Taiwan Strait to rise. When recent remarks by [Taiwan President] Chen [Shui-bian]about the referendum put added strain on China-Taiwan relations, the Japanese government, in an extremely rare move, urged caution on the President's Office in Taiwan," it said.

The newspaper added: "The Japanese government called its word of caution to the Taiwanese government 'a piece of advice given out of goodwill'. If that is the case, it would also be wise to call on the Chinese government to remain calm as it watches the elections unfold on Taiwan."

A former Japanese colony, from 1895-1945, Taiwan's relationship with Japan has been generally good and never subject to the same strains as the often stormy China-Japan relationship. Taiwan's references to Japan's imperial past and its criticisms of Prime Minister's Junichiro Koizumi's visits to the controversial Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo to commemorate the war dead have been noticeably lacking - in contrast to Beijing's.

Likewise, while some Japanese politicians and sectors of the Japanese media have made good mileage out of the apparent hordes of mainland Chinese criminals eroding Japan's treasured sense of law and order, the crimes committed by Taiwanese residents by and large have not registered on the radar screen of Japanese public consciousness.

Japan's pro-Taiwan lobby spans the political spectrum - from the governing Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) venerable Japan-Republic Of China (Taiwan) Diet members' Consultative Council, or Nikkakon, to the opposition Democratic Party of Japan's (DPJ) Japan-Taiwan Parliamentary Friendship Consultation Association. Prominent public figures - including Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda, DPJ party grandee Yukio Hatoyama and Tokyo University academic Mineo Nakajima - have backed Taiwan's entry into the World Health Organization, a Japan-Taiwan Free Trade Agreement and outright Taiwanese independence. All this has angered China, which considers Taiwan a renegade province and which is expanding political and economic ties with Japan.

Japan's cabinet weighted with pro-Taiwan ministers
Japan's current cabinet is weighted with pro-Taiwan ministers who transcend the fractionalized nature of the LDP. A number of members of the pro-Taiwan (anti-Pyongyang, and to some degree, anti-Koizumi) Eto-Kamei faction occupy important cabinet posts, such as hawkish Shoichi Nakagawa, the minister for economy, trade and industry. Prime Minister Koizumi himself comes from the Mori faction, headed by his close friend and hapless prime ministerial predecessor Yoshiro Mori - an avowed friend of Taipei who issued former Taiwanese president Lee Teng-hui a visa to Japan, much to Beijing's irritation.

Mori's trip to neighboring Taiwan in December 2003 makes him only the second former Japanese prime minister to have made the visit. To claim Mori made the visit as a private citizen seems somewhat disingenuous considering his previous office and his close links with Koizumi, and it is hard to believe that Mori would have gone ahead with his visit without at least tacit cabinet approval. Mori admittedly warned Taiwan's current president, Chen Shui-bian, to be "careful" about his referendum plans, but this reproof was tame in comparison to French President Jacques Chirac's tirade about the damage the referendum could do to cross-Strait international relations.

The referendum, on which President Chen has staked his career, will ask voters whether China should be asked to redirect nearly 500 missiles targeted at Taiwan from the mainland, and, if China refuses, whether Taiwan should seek to buy advanced defensive weapons and technology. It also asks whether talks with China should be resumed.

At the unofficial "embassy" level, Japan-Taiwan ties remain strong. Taiwan's de-facto ambassador to Japan, Lo Fu-chen, accompanied Mori on his trip to Taipei in December, and Katsuhisa Uchida, head of the Taipei office of the Interchange Association, Japan's de-facto diplomatic mission, is one of the most pro-Taiwan Japanese envoys ever. Uchida even went so far as to hold the first local celebration of Japanese Emperor Akihito's birthday since Japan severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 1972, when it established full diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China and ended official, but not unofficial, ties with Taiwan. The emperor's birthday party drew heavy criticism from Beijing.

However, now that a genuine separatist agenda is being pushed by Taiwan's President Chen and his Democratic People's Party (DPP), Tokyo has become cooler to the idea of an independent Taiwan and keener on maintaining the status quo.

Taiwan strategically important to Japan
Taiwan, straddling major shipping lanes to and from North Asia, is of strategic importance militarily and economically to Japan. Any conflict in the Taiwan Strait would be highly destabilizing for Japan's maritime security and economy. The worst case scenario would be a Chinese conquest of Taiwan, for the fear is that Beijing could use its dominance of sea routes to Japan as leverage.

This fear has been further heightened by Chinese naval ambitions to transform itself from a "green water" navy capable of power projection in the "first island chain" stretching from the Aleutians in the North Pacific down to the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea - to a "blue water" navy with a presence stretching far into the Pacific. Implicit in this force transformation is the fact that Japanese geography and sea power pose an inherent obstacle to Chinese expansion into the Pacific as long as Taiwan remains free of mainland control.

A Chinese-occupied Taiwan would make Beijing's Pacific naval vision more feasible and it would become even easier to force the issue of the disputed sovereignty of the Senkaku (in Japanese) or Diaoyu (in Chinese) islands that lie between Okinawa, Taiwan and China. The far-flung Senkaku's territorial waters would considerably extend their owner's claims over the surrounding, potentially resource-rich sea beds. Japan is already nervous about China's Pinghu Oil Field located about 400 kilometers northwest of Okinawa and has flown reconnaissance aircraft near the area. Earlier incidents involving Chinese activists trying to land on the Senkaku islands have made Japan more nervous still. Any Chinese naval activity in the Taiwan Strait would only aggravate Japanese suspicions and fears.

It is not surprising that despite being a close friend of Taipei and skeptical about Beijing's long-term strategic objectives, Japan has been more concerned about Taiwan President Chen's pro-independence sentiments and actions that inflame Beijing, especially the referendum. China calls the referendum illegal, and is wary because a referendum system might one day mean that Taiwan voters are asked about independence.

US bases in Okinawa not that far from Taiwan
China also says it will never renounce the right to use force to reunify Taiwan with the mainland, if Taiwan delays too long. Any China-Taiwan military conflict would almost certainly involve the US. Under the US-Japan Security Treaty, the US Third Marine Expeditionary Forces are stationed close to China - on Japanese bases in Okinawa prefecture. The Okinawan archipelago extends southeast of Taipei, a reminder of Japan's possible entanglement in any US-China conflict arising over Taiwan.

Nonetheless, in the best tradition of military planning - hope for the best and plan for the worst - Japan has been pursuing steps to guard against the fallout from any Taiwan conflict. Japan's navy, the Maritime Self Defense Force, has always been more preoccupied with Taiwan than with the North Korean nuclear and missile threat, and it has been acquiring new submarines and aircraft carriers to guard Japanese interests in the area.

Tokyo's recent decision to go ahead with a Missile Defense shield can also be seen through this lens: a Japan-based missile defense shield would geographically cover at least northern Taiwan and would further incorporate Taiwan into Japan's sphere of influence.

In the meantime, just keep those cargo vessels going through Ishigaki's waters, docking at its port and paying those fees.

Jamie Miyazaki is a freelance journalist specializing in North Asia. He has traveled extensively in the region and worked for a variety of publications and security companies.

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