Even as tensions between Beijing and Tokyo grow by the day, there are good reasons to believe outright conflict can be avoided.
The sequel seldom improves on the original. Yet Shinzo Abe, Japan’s newly re-elected prime minister, has already displayed more conviction during his second spell at the Kantei than in the entire year of his first, unhappy premiership.
Political energy is a plus only when it’s wisely deployed however, and some fear that Abe is picking a fight he can’t win when it comes to his hardline stance on China.
Rather than attempting to soothe the tensions that built between Beijing and Tokyo in 2012, Abe has struck a combative tone, especially concerning their dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands – a keystone for nationalists in both countries. Each time fighter aircraft are scrambled or ships are sent to survey the likely flashpoint, we hear more warnings about the approach of a war that China and Japan now seem almost eager to wage. The Economist, for example,recently observed that, “China and Japan are sliding towards war,” while Hugh White of the Australian National University warned his readers: “Don't be too surprised if the U.S. and Japan go to war with China [in 2013].” News this week of another reckless act of escalation – Chinese naval vessels twice training their radars on their Japanese counterparts – will only have ratcheted up their concerns.
These doomful predictions came as Abe set out his vision of a more hard-nosed Japan that will no longer be pushed around when it comes to sovereignty issues. In his December op-ed on Project Syndicate Abe accused Beijing of performing “daily exercises in coercion” and advocated a “democratic security diamond” comprising Australia, India, Japan and the U.S. (rehashing a concept from the 2007 Quadrilateral Security Dialogue). He then proposed defense spending increases – Japan’s first in a decade – and strengthened security relations with the Philippines and Vietnam, which both share Tokyo’s misgivings about China’s intentions. An alliance-affirming trip to the U.S.is expected soon, and there is talk of Japan stationing F-15s on Shimojijima, close to the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands.
However, Abe would argue that he is acting to strengthen Japan in order to balance a rising China and prevent a conflict, rather than creating the conditions for one. And he undoubtedly has a more sanguine view of the future of Sino-Japanese relations than those who see war as an ever more likely outcome. Of course, there is a chance that Chinese and Japanese ships or aircraft will clash as the dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands rumbles on; and, if they do, there is a chance that a skirmish could snowball unpredictably into a wider conflict.
But if Shinzo Abe is gambling with the region’s security, he is at least playing the odds. He is calculating that Japan can pursue a more muscular foreign policy without triggering a catastrophic backlash from China, based on the numerous constraints that shape Chinese actions, as well as the interlocking structure of the globalized environment which the two countries co-inhabit. Specifically, there are seven reasons to think that war is a very unlikely prospect, even with a more hawkish prime minister running Japan:
Photo Credit: Wikicommons
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Henry Pepper
The Chinese government, following its own blinkered political agenda, has never told the Chinese people about the three and a half trillion dollars of reparations that Japan paid China – even though it has, in reality been a very useful admission of guilt and a practical act of apology.
Yes, the Japanese government's stupid and publicly insensitive failure to address the fascist-inspired wartime atrocities across the Asia Pacific regional is cruel, dumb and seriously self-sabotaging (it's woirth noting here that the Japanese people, in the 1930s were feudal peasants with no say in what their government did).
However, behind Tokyo's arrogant public discourse, massive Japanese war reparation payments over 40 years built a China that has developed and grown richer. Trillions of dollars of Japanese 'guilt money' also kick-started the economic and industrial development of the ASEAN countries.
Why would the Japanese government continue to pay reparations to help develop an unstable and untrustworthy CCP that seeks to destabilise, discredit and harm it?
The wider regional picture is no prettier. The Chinese government is acting aggressively across the Asian region, the Chinese government – and its petty agencies – is the common denominator in all the 'hot' regional conflicts.
The Chinese government is currently trying to auction off oil exploration rights inside, what is clearly under the law of the sea, Vietnamese territorial waters.
Chinese government agencies are forcibly preventing Phillippino fishing fleets from catching fish just a few kilometres off the Phillippines coast.
The Chinese government is trying to take most of the South China Sea by force, in clear contravention of the UN Law of the Sea convention that China is a signatory to.
China will forcibly prevent the government of Taiwan becoming truly independent, even though a large and growing majority of Taiwanese people do not wish to be "reunited" with the motherland.
What's next? Annexing the fomrer vassal south of the Korean peninsula?
Retaking the former Chinese territories that Russia annexed more than a century ago when China was weak?
If China's military continues to threaten Japan – to divert the Chinese people's attention from growing inequality at home – the Japanese will acquire nuclear weapons. This could happen in the next few months, the Japanese have everything they need to produce warheads and deadly accurate missiles.
Then Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and other regional countries would rush to develop nuclear weapons – or buy them from Pakistan or North Korea.
Paradoxically, the Chinese government is a paper tiger – profoundly distrusted by all its neighbouring countries and hated by the majority of Chinese people – that will be thoroughly militarily defeated when its bluff is called. And if Beijing continues its current thuggish and illogical foreign policy, it’s bluff will be called, sooner rather than later.
China grew strong and got rich following Deng Xiaoping's "peaceful rise" philosophy and foreign policy.
But today a weak and uncoordinated central government in Beijing is being led by the nose by petty agencies like the empire-building Maritime Surveillance Agency and hick provincial governments.
Instead of fuelling a bureaucratic turf-war, Beijing should be listening to the strategic professionals in its Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Peoples Liberation Army who will ultimately have to manage the appalling consequences the Chinese people will suffer from the current government's South China Sea and broader Foreign Policy madness.
Deng Xiaoping was right. The evidence is overwhelming.
J. Mah
Where are those 50 cents when they are needed!! Here are some cut & paste from the links below on the subject of war reparations.
First read this:
Anti-Japanese sentiment in China
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Japanese_sentiment_in_China
China suffered 7 to 16 million civilian deaths and 3 million military casualties.[1][2] In addition, the war caused an estimated $383.3 billion USD in damage and created 95 million refugees.
China refused war reparations from Japan[5] in the 1972 Joint Communiqué, Japan gave ODA (official development assistance), amounting to 3 trillion yen (30 billion USD, 90% of which are low interest loans). In Japan, this was perceived as a way of making amends to China for past military aggression.
Then read this:
The Untold Story of Japan's War Compensation Record
http://www.unsustainable.org/index.asp?type=article&contentID=20
While this did essentially nothing for the victims, it represented a win-win for both the Chinese and Japanese governments. Chinese officials got to designate the projects on which Japan's money would be spent. Meanwhile for Tokyo, the cost of the aid program Ea cumulative total of about $30 billion — was a mere bagatelle compared to what would have been payable had Japan been forced to negotiate with millions of individual Chinese claimants in the world's courts. The aid program, moreover, was a source of countless lucrative contracts for major Japanese manufacturers which supply most of the bulldozers, electricity generating sets, and countless other types of capital equipment used in Japan's China aid program).
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the whole story is how it has been played in the English-language press. The tone has been set by the Japan Times, a Tokyo-based English-language newspaper long regarded as a semi-official mouthpiece of the Japanese Foreign Ministry. The Japan Times has generally avoided the subject of compensation and instead has assiduously encouraged Westerners to see the war legacy story as merely a question of whether Japan has apologized sincerely enough. It has repeatedly led the foreign press in bouts of parsing Japan's words of apology. Its approach has been echoed by the Japanese establishment's many surrogates and stooges in the Tokyo foreign community, and foreign correspondents seem to buy into the gambit, getting too engrossed in semantics to ask about compensation.
Kim’s Uncle
China would lose a lot if it went to war with Japan! Japan is one of China’s biggest investors and a source of technology transfer! There are costs and benefits to military actions and the cost to china would mount up! But beating the war drum is a past time for insecure CCP supporters! They do not really know what they are wishing for!
Xin Zhang Yan
In the current situation, the first one who will fire the shot will be loooked down upon. Chinese or Japanese. It has been argued time and again over Chinese media in Taiwan and in Hong Kong that China has more to lose should it declare war with Japan.
calvinms
China has enough headache to maintain one fifth population of the world, it could melt anytime with domestic unstability. full scale war is nightmare to both nations. it's war that both sides will lose.
Nan Yang
Would you accept a leader of Germany that would deny the holocaust ?
Japan's PM, Abe denies the Nanjing massacre and says the comfort women were prostitutes.
James
The constant flow of false bravado from commenters on here is astounding. War would be disastrous for all involved and only set China, Japan and the US back decades. Warmongers be damned, peace is where countries thrive.
Luckily it seems, the respective administrations know this. Despite their public sabre rattling and populist territorial claims, China and Japan know the consequences of conflict.
Kim’s Uncle
During the Korean War: the allies described the Communist troops (DPRK, Red China) as having the faces of men but minds of demons! I think that still holds for Commies in China today. But today it is Red Commies have the greed of selfish unscrupolous capitalists but cold hearted heart of a Nazi!
Jack
China now represents all the forces of darkness. The Chinese CCP represent all men who are of flesh, of satan, and of blood. They have been corrupted most gravely by the great red dragon, resist God most seriously, and have lowest and filthiest humanity. So they are typical of the whole corrupt mankind…Such things as man’s corruption, filthiness, unrighteousness, resistance, and disobedience are most completely manifested in the Chinese and are all revealed in them.
https://www.hidden-advent.org/en/
ACT
@Jack
ACT
@Jack
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no. just…..no. There is no such thing as pure evil, for every person who does a deed, no matter how awful, is doing the right thing in their own minds; evil is subjective, and all it means is that it is the polar opposite of what historians or the masses consider just. Let's say that Germany wond WWII for example; history texts from that alternate present would undoubtedly speak of the evils of the jewish community, etc, etc, and how the U.S and western europe and Russia were their lackeys, yadda yadda yadda…. et cetra, so on, and so forth. To the most fanatical believers and supporters of the CPC–anon–the U.S is the very manifestation of evil. And vice versa. But please do not, for all our sakes, bring your religious trash into this discussion. Thankyou.
Jack
@Act,
So you believe that there is no truth or 真理 in this world,OK,I respect your view but I absolutely do not agree!
Padova44
A good analysis as I expected from you. However, I think the biggest point you accurately make was made in passing, that the Chinese Communist Party would lose control of the nationalist tiger. We know the Chinese expression, It's hard to dismount a tiger, but having it by the tail would, as you write, probably be the end of the Party. Nationalism would have the Party for lunch. Then what????
ACT
@pavoda 44
the loss of control of nationalism has already happened; an anonymous source within the CPC has suggested that Xi's some of Xi's advisors and staff are feeding him exaggeratted reports to encourage him to take a harder stance on issues of sovereignty (read: war). The CPC is now effectively drinking the nationalist brew it concocted post Tiananmen Square.
Whichwaydidhegogeorge?
I'm fascinated by this lesson in modern psyops & a look into the psyche of people living in different countries. If there are any paid bloggers here trying to advance one's country's interests online via either soft power or to cow another nation or group of nations, here's my free advice for you. Unless the goal is forced showdown involving invasion and de facto ownership of various Western Pacific areas to right perceived wrongs (which could incidentally ignite WW3 due to the vagaries and inevitablity of Murphy) then:
You're doing it all wrong.
Go back to the drawing board because you're just making it worse. If it's China's psyops goal to either placate or cow potential adversaries then the effects wrought from its online & diplomatic efforts have utterly failed and has had the effect of forcing your neighbors into an alliance with others. Part of me wonders how all of this will ignite as pride won't let anyone back down: will it be from a mistake? An over zealous skipper or jet pilot?
No one could know ahead of time that the murder of a relatively minor Duke in Europe would ignite a terrible costly war. I think we're on the brink of a similar precipice.
So I ask this of all countries involved: Maybe y'all can't be friends but can you at least agree to work together economically to share the bounty & resources of all disputed areas? What's wrong with buying goods harvested by the people that live there? An amenable split where both sides get something is better than one that leaves the other side empty handed & bitterly angry.