By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Mar 15 1996 (IPS)

Increasing tension between Washington and Beijing is testing Japan’s quiet diplomacy as it strives for a measured response to the sabre-rattling along the Taiwan Strait.

As Washington’s strongest ally in Asia and Beijing’s major benefactor, Tokyo has up to now been trying to play down China’s ongoing military exercises off its coastal Fujian province facing the Taiwan Strait.

But reported U.S. and domestic pressure may dictate that Japan take economic measures against the Asian giant.

Since restoring full diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1972, Tokyo has in recent years shown reluctance to take punitive measures against China.

Japan hesitated to suspend aid to China when the Western world collectively cut off international finance to the Beijing regime after the government violently suppressed pro-democracy demonstrations in Tianmen Square in 1989.

And then barely a year passed before Tokyo resumed its official aid programme to Beijing, long before the United States and other industrialised nations restarted diplomatic dialogue.

Now, news reports here quote sources close to the Japanese government as saying the United States is pressing Japan to again wield its economic weapon against China in response to Beijing’s intimidatory military exercises being conducted near the Taiwan Strait.

“Japan’s relations with China are extremely important,” observed Yasuo Onishi, an expert on China at the Institute of Developing Economies in Tokyo. Thus, he added: “The current U.S. military build-up in Taiwan in retaliation to China’s missile tests in the region, has put Tokyo in a difficult situation.”

China, the top recipient of Japan’s aid budget is due to receive close to 600 billion yen (six billion dollars) from Tokyo between now and 1998 — most in low interest loans.

Onishi notes that the Japanese government has not publicly responded to the reports of pressure from Washington to force Japan’s hand, but he would not be at all surprised if they were true.

“Suspending Japanese aid is the only real way Tokyo can display its displeasure with China’s sabre rattling and this would appease Washington,” he said.

During the past week of military exercises, China has fired four missiles within 50 miles of Taiwan, and it has conducted nine days of naval and air force exercises off the Taiwan Strait.

The United States has responded by sending two aircraft carriers to waters near Taiwan, warning that it will defend Taipei in the event of any military attack on Taiwan.

The U.S. fleet, the Independence and the Nimitz, have a combined force of 130 aircraft and 200 tomahawk missiles, and represent one of the largest U.S. forces in the region since the Vietnam war.

Both Beijing and Washington have described the other’s actions as “provocative” and “reckless”.

Indeed, China says it has assured Washington that it has no intention of launching an attack on Taiwan, which is now preparing for its first direct presidential elections on Mar 23.

China believes Taiwan’s Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang, under Lee’s leadership, is covertly pushing a pro-independence agenda, scuttling any chance of reunification with the Mainland.

The Kuomintang, which fled mainland China after being defeated by the communist, has governed Taiwan ever since the end of Japanese colonial rule in 1945.

Observers here do not expect a military attack is on the Chinese agenda at the moment. Rather, they believe Beijing just wanted to send a reminder to Taiwan leader and presidential favourite Lee Teng-hui that China will not tolerate any movement toward independence.

“China calculated the political effects of the missile launch well,” a senior intelligence official was quoted in the Japanese newspapers as saying.

But while Japanese intelligence officials have tried to play down the Chinese military exercises, some sectors of the media have not, giving wide coverage to the fact one of the offshore areas where Chinese missiles landed last Friday is only 60 kms from Yanakuni Island, the Japanese territory closest to Taiwan.

Japan must come out and publicly show its disfavour with China’s “bullying” tactics against Taiwan, said an editorial in the ‘Mainichi Shinbun’ newspaper.

That public pressure coupled with U.S. nudging may prompt Japan to, even if only temporarily, suspend its bilateral aid programme with China, should the current round of military exercises continue over the next few days.

It was under public pressure in 1994 that Japan also withheld 7.8 billion yen (78 million dollars) in grant aid to China following an Asia-Pacific outcry about underground nuclear weapons tests carried out by Beijing.

But some analysts here are of the view that Tokyo should, without any pressure from Washington, be allowed to take the measures it deems fit — with East Asian security being its main concern.

They argue that while Japan has always been careful not to rankle Beijing in its dealings with Taiwan, the United States has over the past year shown much less diplomacy.

Relations between China and Taiwan have been going downhill ever since Lee was granted a visa to travel to the United States last June ostensibly to visit his alma mater Cornell University.

Beijing viewed that trip as another attempt by the Taiwanese president to enhance Taiwan’s status of an independent nation. Subsequent stop-over trips to the United States by Taiwan’s vice- president have only angered Beijing further.

Kiyoshi Takai, a senior political writer at the ‘Yomuiri Shinbun’, Japan’s leading daily, says that both the United States and Taiwan could show much more diplomatic savvy in their dealings with China.

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