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The hype behind India's Japan
ties
By B Raman
In
interviews given before his recent visit to India,
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi did not
characterize the emerging relationship between
India and Japan as a strategic partnership.
However, he spoke of a convergence of strategic
interests. He said, "Japan and India need each
other as strong, prosperous and dynamic partners."
He described the objective of his visit as "to
reinforce Japan-India ties with a new strategic
orientation in a new Asian era".
A joint
statement issued at the end of the visit, during
which Koizumi met with Indian Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh, spoke of the commitment of the two
countries "to a high-level strategic dialogue".
The dialogue would seek to boost economic,
security, energy and other cooperation. It said,
"A strong, prosperous and dynamic India is in the
interests of Japan and vice versa ... As partners
in the new Asian era and as nations sharing common
values and principles, Japan and India will expand
their traditional bilateral cooperation to
cooperation in Asia and beyond."
The use
of expressions such as "strategic partnership", "a
convergence of strategic interests", "a strategic
orientation to bilateral relations", etc has
become commonplace in characterizing bilateral
relations between different countries. The use of
the term strategic generally has two connotations.
Firstly, it is a long-term relationship with a
common vision and shared interests and concerns
and not a tactical, short-term or fire-fighting
relationship.
Secondly, the national
security of the two countries forms one of the
components of the bilateral relationship. It may
be a predominant or very important component, as
in the case of Pakistan's relations with the US or
China, or India's relations with erstwhile Russia;
or one of the components without undue importance,
as in the case of India's relations with the US,
Japan, China and many other countries.
Addressing an Asian Security conference at
New Delhi in January, Indian Defense Minister Shri
Pranab Mukherjee said, "With China today, we share
more common interests and areas of agreement than
differences, including a shared commitment to a
multipolar world. Our security ties have undergone
a change, with resumption of military ties
signified by joint exercises, bilateral visits and
sharing of information on military matters of
joint interest. By institutionalizing the
Sino-Indian dialogue at a political level, with
regular exchanges between designated
interlocutors, the territorial and boundary
differences between our two countries are being
addressed purposefully."
He continued,
"Similarly, Indo-Japan relations, which plummeted
after India's 1998 nuclear tests, are now positive
and robust. The fillip to Indo-Japanese relations
was provided by the August 2000 visit of prime
minister Yoshiro Mori, the first by a Japanese
prime minister to South Asia in a decade. In his
speech he declared, 'Today Indo-Japanese relations
also have a strategic importance, which is quite
obvious when we glance at the world atlas'.
Despite the geographical distance between the two,
there is a growing acceptance that India and Japan
share a certain affinity on a number of issues.
India and Japan have a convergence on energy
issues and have joint concerns about the security
of sea lines of communications and vital choke
points in the Indian Ocean. We also share similar
concerns about WMD [weapons of mass destruction]
proliferation. Concerns about WMD terrorism are
also equally shared. India and Japan also have
views about the restructuring of the UN and the
Security Council in particular."
Mukherjee
thus identified five areas of strategic
convergence between India and Japan. These could
be divided into the following three components:
Political: A common objective of
securing the permanent membership of the UN
Security Council.
Economic:
Cooperating instead of competing with each other
in meeting each other's energy requirements to
keep their economies sustained and growing.
Security-related: Shared
concerns over maritime and weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) terrorism and WMD proliferation.
Mukherjee did not name any countries while talking
of WMD proliferation, but it was apparent that he
had Pakistan and North Korea in mind.
The
Indo-Japanese common objective of securing
permanent membership of the UN Security Council,
for which they have been cooperating with each
other as well as with the other two aspirants,
Germany and Brazil, cannot really be described as
a strategic objective with an enduring vision.
Once their present exercise for this purpose
culminates in success or failure in the coming
months, this objective will cease to be a
politically binding factor. Unless, in the
meanwhile, they find or identify other, more
enduring common objectives, the relationship will
become bereft of any long-enduring political glue.
What could be such political glue? This
question has not received much attention so far
from the strategic analysts of the two countries -
governmental and non-governmental. The search for
it has to be started and intensified. Their common
interests lie in facilitating the search for a
negotiated solution to the problem of the Tamils
of Sri Lanka without affecting the unity and
territorial integrity of Sri Lanka, in assisting
African states in the eradication of poverty and
disease, in the research and development of
medicines for AIDS that would be within the reach
of the poor people of Asia and Africa, in the
protection of the environment, etc, etc - there
are any number of issues with a visionary impact
that could be taken up.
How to take them
up and pursue them? The time has come to discuss
this.
Both India and Japan are
energy-importing countries. They are dependent on
external supplies for keeping their economies
sustained and growing. How could they cooperate
and help each other in this task? While they have
agreed that energy security should be an important
component of their bilateral relationship, no
concrete action has been taken so far at the
governmental and non-governmental levels to
translate this agreement into action on the
ground. Such action has to be in the form of
brainstorming between the experts of the two
countries, the drawing-up of a joint or
coordinated plan of implementation and giving
effect to it.
Mukherjee did not refer to
other equally important aspects of bilateral
economic relations - such as the sluggish growth
of bilateral trade and the unsatisfactory flow of
direct investment from Japan into the Indian
economy. The determination of the leaders of the
two countries to give a strategic thrust to their
bilateral relations is not reflected in the actual
state of economic relations.
India has
been the largest beneficiary of development loans
from Japan during the past two years. During the
last financial year ending March 31, India is
estimated to have received from Japan US$1.27
billion to improve infrastructure and eradicate
poverty. But the total value of their bilateral
trade stood at a meagre $4.35 billion, as against
annual Sino-Indian trade of $13 billion. Between
1991, when India started opening up its economy,
and 2004, the value of the total flow of Japanese
investments into India is estimated at only $3
billion.
The spectacular increase in the
value of Sino-Indian bilateral trade in recent
years has been largely due to the large-scale
buying of raw materials by Chinese industries from
India to meet the galloping needs of the Chinese
economy. There was a time after India became
independent in 1947 when a war-shattered Japan,
which had embarked on a program of restoring its
industries, turned to India to meet its
requirements of raw materials - particularly iron
ore to feed its rebuilt iron and steel industry.
The Japanese economy is no longer as dependent on
the import of raw materials from India as it used
to be in the 1950s and 1960s, or as the Chinese
economy is now.
Indian iron ore is still
an important item of export to Japan, but not to
the same extent as before. The Indian export
basket to Japan is still small - iron ore,
seafood, textiles and jewelry being the main
items. A drive for the expansion and the
diversification of bilateral trade was undertaken
after the visit of former prime minister Mori in
August 2000. Information technology (IT) products
and services were identified as items that could
have a trigger effect.
A Japan-India IT
promotion and cooperation initiative was launched
and a Japan-India IT summit was held in Japan.
Japan liberalized rules for the issue of
multiple-entry visas for IT experts from India. It
has been estimated that about 50 Indian IT
companies have already set up offices in Japan.
Despite all these measures, the total value of the
export of Indian software products and services to
Japan was estimated in the financial year 2002-03
at an insignificant 3% of the total value of
India's global exports of software products and
services. While the figures for the subsequent
period are not yet available, the increase has not
been substantial.
A hurdle in the way of
stepping up exports of IT software products and
services to Japan has been the fact that the
Indian IT industry is geared up to meet largely
the needs of English-knowing and English-using
clientele. Unless the Indian IT industry develops
its language capability in a significant measure,
its export market will remain largely confined to
the English-using world. China, which has been
paying more attention to the needs of the
non-English-using world, is likely to steal a
march over the Indian IT software industry. The
Chinese have shown a remarkable thirst for
learning the Japanese language. It has been
estimated that the Chinese constitute nearly
two-thirds of the foreign students studying in
Japan.
India has some showcase examples of
Indo-Japanese economic collaboration. One could
cite in this connection the Maruti car project,
the Haldia petrochemical complex and the Delhi
Metro presently under construction. But those are
exceptions that do not disprove the reality of
inadequate Japanese interest in investment in
India, as compared with their enthusiasm for
China, despite their tension-ridden political
relations with China.
Among the reasons
cited for the poor flow of Japanese investments
into India are the unpredictability and
sluggishness of Indian decision-making and
implementation processes; the tendency to unduly
politicize the economic decision-making process,
which often results in each government reviewing
and sometimes reversing the economic decisions of
its predecessor; the poor state of infrastructure
as compared to China; the inadequate and erratic
power supply; the high cost of power supply as
compared to China; and the restrictions (now being
removed) on foreign investment in the retail and
real estate sectors. It is said that a substantial
part of the foreign investment flows into China
has been in the retail and real estate sectors,
and that by keeping these sectors closed until
recently, India has denied itself the benefit of a
similar flow.
It is also pointed out that
in the initial years much of the Japanese
investment in the manufacturing sector in China
was meant to produce cheap consumer goods for the
Japanese market by taking advantage of the low
wages and other favorable labor conditions in
China. A high-value yen had pushed up the cost of
production in Japan, thereby driving Japanese
companies to invest in China in order to lower the
cost of production of the articles required by
Japanese consumers. It is said that opportunities
for such reverse imports do not exist in India.
Security-related issues are only now
emerging as a component of Indo-Japanese
relations. The present focus has been on the need
for cooperation against maritime piracy, which is
a reality, and maritime terrorism, which is a
possibility. The threat perceptions of the two
countries relating to maritime terrorism are
unlikely to be identical. The possibility of
threats in the choke points of the Gulf area would
be of equal concern to the economies of India,
Japan and China, but threats in the choke points
of Southeast Asia would be of greater concern to
Japan and China than to India.
Despite
this, the Indian navy seems to be keen to play an
active role in Southeast Asia. Opportunities for
such a role in the Gulf are limited because of the
heavy US presence there and the likely concerns of
the countries of the Gulf area over the reactions
of Pakistan to an enhanced role for the Indian
navy. The littoral states of the Malacca Strait,
such as Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, would
be more comfortable with an Indian role in
ensuring maritime security against pirates and
terrorists than an American or a Japanese or a
Chinese role. The US and Japanese navies would
prefer a participatory role for themselves, but if
there was resistance to this, they would be
comfortable with an Indian role. The Chinese are
opposed to an American or a Japanese role, but
their attitude to a possible Indian role is
unclear. Anyhow, it would not be advisable for the
Indian navy to get involved in the actual
patrolling of the Malacca Strait, even in the
unlikely event of being invited by the littoral
states to do so. It should confine its cooperation
to exchange of intelligence, provision of training
facilities and joint anti-piracy and
anti-terrorism exercises with the navies of
Southeast Asia.
After the visit of Koizumi
to New Delhi, there has been a talk of similar
anti-piracy and anti-terrorism cooperation between
the coast guards of India and Japan. China is and
would continue to be an inhibiting factor in the
development of the full potential of bilateral
relations between India and Japan in the
security-related fields. It is interesting to note
that in his speech of January 29, Mukherjee
highlighted the developing military-to-military
relationship between India and China, but
refrained from commenting on the possibility and
desirability of similar relationship with the
Japanese armed forces. Any attempt to give a
higher importance to security-related Indian
cooperation with Japan is likely to be inhibited
by concerns over its likely negative impact on the
developing Sino-Indian relations, which are more
multi-dimensional than Indo-Japanese relations.
No other country in Asia has benefited
more from Japanese economic interest than China,
but there is hardly any political bonding between
the two countries. The perceived identity of
perceptions between Japan and the US in matters
such as the security of Taiwan adds to the
traditional Chinese distrust of Japan. The Chinese
attitude to Japan has been very short-sighted. The
European victims of the Nazi war crimes have not
allowed lingering memories of such war crimes to
affect their relations with Germany. In fact,
after the end of World War II, they assisted the
new post-Nazi German leadership and people to rid
themselves of the guilt complexes arising from the
war crimes of their predecessors. They had the
mental generosity to realize that they cannot hold
the new generation of German leaders and people
responsible for the war crimes of their
predecessors.
Signs of such a mental
generosity are not yet evident in China. It
continues to hold the present Japanese leadership
and people responsible for the war crimes of their
predecessors. It is not prepared to assist the
Japanese leaders and people to rid themselves of
the guilt complexes arising from the war crimes of
their predecessors. On the contrary, the Chinese
leadership keeps stoking them.
As long as
this Chinese attitude lasts, scope for the full
development of China's relations with Japan will
remain limited and this could have a drag effect
on the development of Indo-Japanese relations too.
B Raman is additional secretary
(retired), cabinet secretariat, government of
India, New Delhi, and, presently, director,
Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai, and
distinguished fellow and convener, Observer
Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter. E-mail:
itschen36@gmail.com
(Copyright 2005 B
Raman) |
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