Japan's opposition leader seeks to
woo China By Hisane Masaki
TOKYO - China's cancellation of a meeting
with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi
over his pilgrimages to a controversial Tokyo war
shrine is not stopping Japan's top opposition
leader from visiting Beijing.
Seiji
Maehara, the 43-year-old Democratic Party of Japan
(DPJ) leader, will make his diplomatic debut with
a visit to the US on December 6-11 and then to
China from December 12-14.
China said
Sunday an annual leaders' meeting with Japan and
South Korea scheduled for the same dates Maehara
plans to be
in
Beijing is off due to "the current atmosphere", a
reference to Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni shrine,
where 14 World War II Class-A war criminals,
including former prime minister Hideki Tojo, are
enshrined along with some 2.5 million war dead.
China and South Korea regard the shrine as
a symbol of Japan's past militarism, and have
harshly condemned Koizumi's repeated visits there
as glossing over Japan's wartime aggression and
atrocities. Koizumi most recently visited the
shrine in mid-October.
Leaders of the
three countries meet once a year on the sidelines
of a conference with the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations, this year to take place December
12-14 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Meanwhile, Maehara's trip is an apparent
attempt to underscore how different he is from
Koizumi, whom he has criticized as being wholly
devoted to strengthening ties with the US and
lacking an effective Asia policy. The opposition
leader has specifically criticized the prime
minister's visits to Yasukuni, which has emerged
as the biggest source of tension between Japan and
its Asian neighbors, especially China and South
Korea.
Maehara became leader of Japan's
largest opposition party in a vote in
mid-September. The DPJ has 194 lower and upper
house lawmakers. The opposition leader has written
off Koizumi as a "one-eyed hunter running after
only one hare when he needs two hares to feed his
family". To be sure, Maehara will try to run after
a second hare. But he will likely find the prey
far more elusive than he thinks.
In this
context, the hunt is about diplomatic vision and
the finesse needed to keep Japan's relations with
Asian neighbors stable and friendly while
maintaining strong ties with its most important
ally, the United States.
Maehara, who
apparently wants to play a role in mending ties
between Tokyo and Beijing, has asked China to
arrange for him to meet Chinese President Hu
Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao. While discussing
the Yasukuni shrine and other pending issues,
Maehara is expected to explore possible avenues to
a future breakthrough in stalled bilateral ties.
He is expected to specifically propose extending
Japan's technological cooperation in the fields of
energy-saving and new energy sources to help China
resolve increasingly serious air pollution and
other environmental problems.
He succeeded
Katsuya Okada, who stepped down to take
responsibility for the DPJ's devastating setback
in the September 11 general election. Okada was
also a vocal critic of Koizumi's shrine visits.
The DPJ favors the proposed construction of a
state-run, nonreligious facility as an alternative
to Yasukuni shrine as a way to settle the the
dispute. Koizumi is negative about the idea,
although he promised South Korean President Roh
Moo-hyun earlier this year that he would consider
it.
Maehara as a
hardliner Maehara's critical stance on
Koizumi's Yasukuni visits will undoubtedly play
well with Chinese and South Korean leaders. But if
leaders of the two Asian neighbors expect anything
more than that of the Japanese opposition leader,
they will be disappointed. Maehara is not only
pro-US like Koizumi, but also a hardliner on
various other disputes with the two Asian
neighbors. Maehara is also a staunch advocate of
amending the pacifist, post-war Japanese
constitution to enable the country to play a
greater role in international security affairs. He
often uses even tougher rhetoric than Koizumi
against China and South Korea.
During an
October party leaders' debate in the diet, Japan's
parliament, Maehara told Koizumi that China is
trying to "drive a wedge" between Japan and the
US. The DPJ leader also told the prime minister
that Japan should never "turn a blind eye to"
China's ongoing natural gas projects in the
disputed waters in the East China Sea near the
so-called median line, which was drawn by Japan
but has not been recognized by China. The line is
meant to separate the two countries' exclusive
economic zones. The disputed Senkaku Islands, or
Diaoyu Islands in Chinese, are located on the
Japanese side of the median line. Although the gas
fields in question are all located on the Chinese
side, Japan has expressed deep concern that China
may be siphoning off natural resources buried
under the seabed on its side of the median line.
More recently, in a lecture in Tokyo, Maehara
expressed concerns about China's growing military
spending and said not only dialogue and engagement
but also deterrence is necessary.
Maehara's outspokenness has already
backfired vis-a-vis his South Korea diplomacy. He
had initially tried to arrange a visit to Seoul
for talks with Roh in late November. But Roh put
off the meeting following a report the Japanese
lawmaker criticized Roh's stance on textbook and
territorial disputes between the two countries.
Maehara said in a November 20 TV talk
show: "There is something wrong with Mr Roh in
urging Prime Minister Koizumi to resolve the
territorial dispute over Takeshima Island while
South Korea effectively controls it." Takeshima,
located in the Sea of Japan, is called Dokdo in
Korean. Maehara also said that Roh's
"understanding of the Japanese textbook screening
system appears shallow".
Despite this, the
DPJ still wants to arrange a meeting between its
leader and Roh by the end of the year.
Maehara and Taiwan's Lien Some
parallels may be drawn between Maehara and
Taiwan's Lien Chan, an unsuccessful presidential
candidate and former leader of the pro-unification
Kuomintang (KMT). Lien in spring became the first
high-ranking Kuomintang leader to return to the
mainland since the party fled to Taiwan after
losing the civil war in 1949. He visited the
mainland again in October.
The communist
leaders in Beijing still regard Taiwan as a
renegade province and have not yet renounced the
use of force, if necessary, to reunify the island
with the mainland.
Since the
independence-leaning Chen Shui-bian became
Taiwanese president in 2000 after defeating Lien
and ousting the KMT from power for the first time,
cross-strait relations have been chilly but have
continued to expand economically, just as
Sino-Japanese relations have. Chen again defeated
Lien in the 2004 presidential elections.
Public opinion polls taken in the closing
days of Lien's visit to the mainland indicated a
majority of Taiwanese believed it had helped to
ease cross-strait tensions, although the door to
formal negotiations between China and Taiwan is
still not open very wide seven months later.
Public support for the KMT has risen since Lien's
mainland journey.
As with Lien, Maehara
apparently has a strong desire to use his Beijing
trip for domestic political gains. Still, there
are also a lot of differences between Lien and
Maehara. Maehara's DPJ is a much weaker opposition
force than the KMT. Unlike Chen's Democratic
Progressive Party, which faces an
opposition-controlled parliament, Koizumi's
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)-led coalition now
holds more than two-thirds of seats in the lower
house, the more powerful of the two diet chambers.
Unlike Chen, whose public support is hovering at
low levels amid criticism of neglecting mainland
policy, Koizumi is more popular than ever.
Beijing leaders knew their meeting with
Lien would put strong pressure on Chen, so they
rolled out the red carpet for him and offered a
package of goodwill gestures, including two giant
pandas and elimination of import tariffs on
Taiwanese fruit, among other things. In an
apparent bid to reverse his declining popularity,
Chen has accepted a proposal from Beijing for
talks on direct chartered passenger and cargo
flights during the Chinese New Year in January
across the Taiwan Strait, allowing Taiwanese
airliners to fly over mainland Chinese airspace
and also permitting the exchange of the yuan,
China's currency, on Kinmen and Matsu islands.
There is alarm within the Chen government that
Beijing will continue indirectly to lend a helping
hand to the KMT to regain power in 2008
presidential elections.
While Maehara is
scheduled to be in Beijing, there is no guarantee
those plans won't be derailed. A supra-partisan
association of Japanese diet members, chaired by
former foreign minister Masahiko Komura, was
forced to cancel a planned visit to Beijing on
November 25, only two days before they were to
travel.
Although China cited scheduling
difficulties for its leaders, some people in Japan
suggested the Yasukuni issue was the real reason
for the cancellation. It seems unlikely Maehara
can hold talks with Chinese Premier Wen, who
likely will be in Kuala Lumpur during all the
opposition leader's planned three-day visit. If he
cannot meet Wen, as well as Hu, Maehara's debut in
China diplomacy could be branded a failure. Also,
it remains to be seen how warmly Maehara, who is
far from pro-China, will be greeted by those
Chinese leaders he does see. But one thing is
sure. He will not have it as good as Taiwan's
Lien.
And Maehara may not fare any better
on his US visit, where he is expected to meet
mainly Democratic leaders. Although he is a
steadfast proponent of stronger security and other
ties with the US, the DPJ leader has advocated a
more assertive, independent and strategic foreign
policy and has harshly criticized Koizumi as just
following the US line.
His party demands a
withdrawal as soon as possible of Japanese
Self-Defense Forces (SDF) deployed in the southern
Iraqi city of Samawah on a reconstruction mission.
The Koizumi government is expected on December 8
to decide on a one-year extension of SDF troop
deployment in Iraq, though it is also considering
beginning to withdraw them about May.
Hisane Masaki is a Tokyo-based
journalist, commentator and scholar on
international politics and economy. Masaki's
e-mail address is yiu45535@nifty.com
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