Asia-Pacific, Economy & Trade, Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines

POLITICS-EAST ASIA: Giants Get Ready for Face-to-Face After APEC

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Nov 20 2004 (IPS) - As Japan’s Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi gets ready, on Sunday, to meet China’s President Hu Jintao for the first time in over a year, stark realities have become clearly evident.

Since Koizumi came into power in April 2001, Sino-Japanese relations have taken a nosedive, and the premier to date has yet to initiate a formal summit between the two Asian powers.

The talks between Koizumi and Hu are due to take place in the Chilean capital of Santiago, after the meeting of the 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit.

Koizumi said he would raise the issue of last week’s incursion into Japanese waters by a Chinese submarine.

On Wednesday, observers heaved a sigh of relief when Beijing apologised for the incident.

The Chinese sub was spotted in Japanese territorial waters among islands between Okinawa and Taiwan on Nov. 10, putting Japan’s military on alert and prompting the navy to launch a maritime policing operation – only the second time such an order was issued in 50 years.

A simmering bone of historical contention for Beijing, which Koizumi seems determined to kindle, is the Japanese prime minister’s consecutive official visits to Yasukuni Shrine to pay respects to Japan’s war dead that includes World War II Class A criminals responsible for carrying out harsh colonisation policies in northern China.

Beijing has repeatedly called on Tokyo ”to follow the principle of using history as a mirror” – an apparent reference to Japan’s invasion and occupation of parts of China in the 1930s and ’40s.

More recently, bilateral clashes also occurred over China’s natural gas exploration project in the East China Sea.

Japan is protesting against the drilling in a cluster of islands between Okinawa and Taiwan that are claimed by both sides. As well, the two countries are battling access to a vast oil reserve in Siberia.

Beijing wants Russia to build a pipeline to its own oil center at Daiqing, while Japan is offering to fund a pipeline to a port in the Sea of Japan.

As it is, if bilateral tensions between both countries are allowed to get out of hand, a military clash of the East Asian giants could eventuate. But analysts, however, are keen to rule out such a scenario.

”Such a prospect is certainly not desired by both countries. The situation now is more a jostling for positions between the new powers in the region,” Prof. Yuzo Murayama, a China expert formerly at the Defense University, told IPS.

He said this maneuvering was the underlying reason why the recent Defense Agency White Paper had identified China as the new potential threat to Japan’s security.

”The White Paper even outlines scenarios in which Chinese forces could attack Japan – pointing to its powerful military and attempts to create a East Asian alliance in the region under its leadership,” he added.

Murayama called for a balanced approach to the new challenge to Japan’s traditional diplomacy in Asia but pointed out that Tokyo’s statecraft was becoming increasingly invisible as China makes further inroads in the region.

”Japan has failed to envisage a grand strategy for its foreign policy and is always on the bandwagon of the United States,” he said.

But a tit-of-tat after the submarine incident, which involved a two-day chase on the high seas, seems to be taking place and could complicate the already very tense situation between Beijing and Tokyo.

On Friday, Japanese legislative commissions recommended that Japan review, and perhaps curtail, its development aid to China.

Members of the House of Councilors commission visited China in August to review seven projects for which Japan had provided funds, including the building of an airport in Beijing, sewage disposal and gas supply projects in Tianjin, measures to improve air pollution and construction of water purification facilities in Guiyang.

The report praised the projects, describing them as progressing smoothly and benefiting China’s economy, social infrastructure and the environment, reported the ‘Yomiuri Shimbun’ daily.

However, the report concluded that new development aid to China was not necessary, and loans to China should be reduced to a level at which outstanding capital would not increase.

Recent events in China, including its remarkable economic growth and increasing defense budget, were mentioned in the document. It also pointed out that education was becoming increasingly anti-Japanese.

But economist Daisuke Hiratsuke at the quasi-governmental Institute of Developing Economies, said there was too much at stake economically between China and Japan for both to go for each other’s throats.

”Both China and Japan had close to 100 billion U.S. dollars of bilateral trade last year, and both need each other,” he said in an interview.

”Nonetheless, tensions remain because there is still some anxiety at the way China tries to dominate issues in Asia,” added Hiratsuke. He said China’s military might and its attempts to create an East Asian alliance in the region under its leadership were making Tokyo edgy.

Joseph Cheng, a professor of international relations in Hong Kong University, said there were two dimensions to China-Japan ties.

”On the positive side you certainly see tremendous economic complementarity and both governments value the importance of the bilateral relationship. But unfortunately there is a kind of rising nationalism on both sides and there still remains all these historical issues unresolved,” he told the ‘Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio’.

Cheng said both governments were also trying to satisfy domestic opinion while at the same time trying hard to avoid sharp deteriorations in the bilateral relationship.