Sino-Japanese Relations Did ‘Warm Spring’ Visit End With A ‘Cold Sprinkle”?

Sino-Japanese Relations Did ‘Warm Spring’ Visit End With A ‘Cold Sprinkle”?

by Bhaskar Roy

Chinese President Hu Jintao’s five-day visit to Japan starting May 6 was built up by Beijing as a major event in the bilateral relations between the two countries. There was much to be repaired and retrieved, much in China’s interest. Thankfully, the process started during the brief tenure of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who kept away from visiting the controversial Yashukuni Shrine of the war dead which also has the remains of 14 class “A” World War criminals. Abe’s successor and current Prime Minister Yashuo Fukuda has also followed in his predecessor’s footsteps especially where the shrine is concerned.

Abe had a far more acceptable profile than most of his predecessors, in China. His father, the senior Fukuda was one of the main architects of the establishment of Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations. He assiduously respected Chinese sentiments on the issue of Japanese aggression of China and visited China last November to smooth relations. But as he found out towards the end of Hu’s visit, it is difficult to please China even if one rolls over. China would never allow an issue which can be used as a stick for beating, die completely.

On the eve of the visit the Chinese official propaganda apparatus and Hu Jintao himself, labeled it as “warm spring”. The Chinese media reported that Hu would play a “ping pong” game with Fukuda, reminiscent of the first Chinese initiative to establish bilateral relations with the USA in the 1970s. This signified the process of thaw that began following the exit of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi two years earlier. Bilateral relations plummuted after former Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited Japan in 1998 and hectored the Japanese on their war crimes. Koizumi continued to pay respect at the controversial shrine.

Nevertheless, Japan-China trade continued to flourish, with Japanese investments rising from the traditional assembly sector, hotels and shopping arcades to more solid manufacturing and machinery industry. As Hu Jintao prepared for his visit, China had replaced the USA as Japan’s largest trading partner, and bilateral trade touched $ 250 billion. But frictions were never too far.

Hu Jintao embarked on his Japan visit at a sensitive and somewhat difficult time for China. Warming of relations with Japan would help. This may not be described with a strong word like “gamble” but it was definitely a calculated chance before the August Beijing Olympic games.

At the moment, a smooth, successful and incident free holding of the games is China’s prime priority, though the games have lost a lot of sheen because of the international umbrage over how the Chinese have handled the Tibetan issue and the Dalai Lama. Japan, a largely Buddhist oriented country, an important neighbour, and major participant in the Olympics required some calming on the Tibet issue. The Chinese handling of the March Lhasa riots and subsequent vitriolic attacks on the Dalai Lama especially, had not gone down well in Japan. After some cautionary advice, Prime Minister Fukuda had to come out and personally declare that the Tibet issue was no longer an internal matter of China.

Hu Jintao’s arrival in Tokyo was met by pro-Tibet and anti-China demonstrators. Although the groups were small, they were symbolic with more Japanese than Tibetan participating. Small groups of right-wingers also waved tarnished Chinese flags, chanting “Go home”. The Chinese are highly sensitive to even the smallest of defiance.

On the positive side, the two sides, signed a document on regular top level visits, and upgraded defence relations. The defence exchanges envisage defence Minister level visits and bilateral naval ship goodwill visits. These are basically much needed confidence building measures underlining the fact that political and strategic mistrust need to be stabilized if not resolved as early as possible.

Having said that, the gulf in perception and reality remain wide. The Chinese signaled that the differences over the ownership of the East China Sea gas fields would be resolved during the visit. That did not happen, and both agreed to continue discussions. China claims its continental shelf extends to Okinawa claiming the gas fields almost in entirety. Japan holds the position that the dividing line should be the median. It is a difficult problem to resolve with both energy hungry countries contesting this very crucial resource.

There are other issues, especially the Chinese perception of Japan promoting an alliance with the USA, India and Australia to counter China’s development. Australia has opted out of the Japan-proposed-strategic dialogue-quadrilateral, and Beijing hopes to coax Japan out of it and single out India for strategic offence.

Other issues include China’s perception of the enhanced US-Japan military agreement of 2004, Japan’s increasing Military budget and, importantly, Tokyo’s position on Taiwan which Beijing suspects encourages Taipei’s pro-independence and status quo groups.

On a larger canvas, Beijing appears to be concerned that Japan, apart from its alliance with the USA, is now forging a military partnership with India to prevent China’s domination of Asia. Recent Chinese military and strategic doctrine does not hide the fact that as third strongest economic power in the world, China believes it is its prerogative to become a matching military power, and that it has the right to control the huge swath from west Asia, East Africa and Central Asia to Oceania.

Earlier, Chinese strategists did not see India as a serious problem. It concentrated on psychological warfare against Japan, trying to rouse most of East and South East Asia of rising militarist Japan threatening to repeat its barbarous occupation of the region.

Now concerned with India’s post-cold war outgoing foreign policy and strengthening of its defence sector, Beijing has started a mind war game that India has been so badly defeated psychologically, following the 1962 Sino-Indian war that it cannot dare to stand up to China.

These are old games. But China is so wedded to propaganda, that Hu Jintao could not refrain from reminding Japan of its war crimes in his speech at Tokyo’s Waseda University on May 8. Though put in a far more subdued manner than Jiang Zemin’s 1998 speeches, Hu still reminded this Japanese of their war history.

In that one stroke Hu Jintao demolished most of what he had achieved during the earlier part of this tour. There were protests and Waseda website objected to Hu’s statement.

Fukuda expressed Japanese displeasure by calling off his “ping-pong” game with Hu at Waseda at the last moment, when Hu got prepared for the game.

Fukuda told reporters “I’m glad I didn’t play ping-pong with him…..He’s very strategic. I thought you can’t be too careful”.

A day before at the joint press conference in Tokyo, Fukuda had cautioned Hu that China should take the international atmosphere into consideration for the Olympic games.

As China grows in economic and military strength it is becoming more assertive that it cannot do anything wrong, and whatever it says or does must be accepted unquestionably by the rest of humanity.

Hu Jintao’s Japan visit ended with a cold shower. It is unlikely, however, that Beijing is going to change soon.

(The author is an eminent China analyst with many years of experience of study on the developments in China. He can be reached at grouchohart@yahoo.com)