When China Rules the World

by Martin Jacques

  BIG BROTHER AND LITTLE BROTHER

  Since 1949 Taiwan has been China ’s most acute regional problem. It is conceivable, however, that Taiwan might be placed on the back burner for a decade or more, during which time longer-term trends might effectively resolve the issue one way or another. If that should happen, then by far the most difficult issue facing China in East Asia would be Japan. [987] Until the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5, which was a direct consequence of the Meiji Restoration in 1868 — with Japan ’s turn to the West, rejection of its own continent, especially China, and its expansionist ambitions — relations between China and Japan had been relatively harmonious. Japan had been a long-term tributary state, duly honouring and acknowledging its debt to Chinese civilization and the Confucian tradition, even if at times it proved a distant and somewhat recalcitrant one — which, given its island status and advanced civilization, was hardly surprising. [988]

  For well over a century, however, following the 1894 war, China ’s relationship with Japan has been far worse than that with any other power. Many Chinese still see that war and the subsequent Treaty of Shimonoseki as the darkest hour in China ’s ‘century of humiliation’. China ’s ignominious defeat and the extremely onerous terms inflicted on China in the peace left a particularly bitter taste. Defeat by what was seen as an inferior nation within the Chinese world order was considered to be a far greater humiliation than losing to the Western barbarians, and served to undermine the prevailing Chinese world-view. This was a case — in the Confucian discourse — of the student beating up the teacher or the younger brother beating up the older brother. [989]

  The ignominy visited upon China in the 1894-5 war was compounded and accentuated by Japan’s occupation of north-east China in 1931 and then its full-scale invasion of north-east, east and parts of central China in 1937; the scars these hostilities left have never been healed. To this day, the Nanjing Massacre defines the nature and identity of the Japanese as far as the Chinese are concerned and therefore in large measure their attitude towards Japan. It may have taken place seventy years ago, but it remains an open wound, as present in the relationship between the two countries as if it had happened yesterday. Even the numbers killed — 300,000 in the Chinese interpretation — is still a highly charged issue. [990] Of course, the reason why these questions remain so alive is because the Japanese have failed to apologize properly, or demonstrate any serious sign of confronting their own past, unlike the contrition that the Germans have shown for their behaviour in the Second World War. [991] The Japanese paid dearly for their defeat at the hands of the United States and Europe — with huge casualties, the Tokyo trials, the confiscation of its overseas assets and the American occupation — but they have shown little remorse towards their Asian neighbours for their country’s often barbaric behaviour, which was far worse than anything Japan meted out to the Western powers. The Nanjing Massacre was the worst example, with the mass killing and rape of civilians, but this was repeated on a smaller scale elsewhere in China, while the Japanese occupation of Korea was also marked by considerable cruelty. [992] The numerous apologies that Japan has given have been little more than formulaic, while the courts have refused to compensate the individual victims of crimes committed in Japan ’s name. The grudging attitude towards its Asian neighbours is symptomatic of post-Meiji Japan — respect for the West and contempt for Asia. Nor, for most of the post-war period, has Japan needed to rethink its attitudes. [993] It rapidly re-established itself as the dominant power in the region, in a different league to its poorer neighbours, while the United States, its sponsor and protector, neither required nor desired Japan to apologize to Communist China during the Cold War, given that a new and very different set of priorities now applied.

  Fast-forward fifty years, however, and East Asia presents a different picture. Japan no longer constitutes the great exception, a Western level of development surrounded by a sea of backwardness. On the contrary, the first four Asian tigers enjoy a GDP per head not far short of Japan ’s, [994] living standards in the region have risen enormously, and Japan ’s old nemesis, China, has been the subject of a remarkable economic transformation. In short, history has finally caught up with Japan. [995] As a society and culture, Japan has always been at its best when its goals — and the path towards those goals — were set in concrete. But when both the goals and the path need to be adapted to changed circumstances, perhaps even subject to wholesale revision, Japan seems to find the shift inordinately difficult. [996] Rather like France, it tends to fiddle and delay until nothing short of a revolution — or, in Japan ’s case, a restoration — is required. In the face of the transformation of East Asia, and above all China, Japan has been effectively paralysed, unable to change direction, offering little other than more of the same. The ruling Liberal Democrats, who have dominated Japanese politics since 1955, have found lateral thinking virtually impossible. [997] As Chinese East Asian expert Zhu Feng argues: ‘ Japan has been less prepared for the rise of China than any other country. They can’t believe it. They don’t want to believe it. Yet it affects them more than anyone else.’ [998] For the most part, Japan has gone into denial about the rise of China, wishing that somehow it might go away or that it was perhaps a figment of everyone else’s imagination.

  From the early nineties, Japanese politics began to shift to the right and become more nationalistic, a process hastened by the collapse of the Social Democratic Party, which had always been a staunch opponent of Japanese rearmament. [999] Japanese ruling politicians grew more aggressive towards China, displaying impatience with traditional deferential tendencies towards their neighbour, increased concern about China ’s rise, and frustration with what they saw as China ’s exploitation of Japan ’s colonial past. [1000] In 1996 for the first time the proportion of those saying in an annual poll that they did not have friendly feelings towards the Chinese exceeded those that did. The crisis over North Korea and its threatened development of nuclear weapons, together with its abduction of Japanese citizens between 1977 and 1983, served to harden nationalist sentiment: indeed, the North Korean threat was seen as a proxy for the Chinese threat, thereby helping to ratchet up hostility towards China as well. [1001] In 1999 an extreme nationalist, Ishihara Shintaro, was elected governor of Tokyo: previously anti-American, he quickly became rabidly hostile towards China. Meanwhile, Japan entered into a new defence agreement with the United States which was clearly directed against China and which implicitly involved Japan in the defence of Taiwan. [1002] The growing enmity towards China found its fullest expression to date during Junichiro Koizumi’s premiership between 2001 and 2006, with his annual visits in his capacity as prime minister to the Yasukuni Shrine — a politically inspired memorial to Japan’s fallen soldiers, including Class A war criminals — which were intended to encourage nationalism at home while also being provocative towards China. Since Koizumi, however, both the short premiership of Shinzo Abe, previously regarded as hawkish towards China, and especially that of Yasuo Fukuda have revealed a desire in ruling circles to temper the hostility of the Koizumi era and seek a more accommodating relationship with China. [1003] It remains to be seen what course Japan will steer during the premiership of Taro Aso, who also has a nationalist reputation, but his period in office is likely to prove of short duration.

  Japan, meanwhile, finds itself more or less isolated in East Asia. Although it has been generous in bestowing aid on many countries in the region, it has failed to address its wartime legacy, which is a continuing source of resentment for many of its neighbours, especially South Korea and China. It has remained, furthermore, relatively aloof from its neighbours, having refused to open up its market and resisted entering into multilateral, rather than bilateral, arrangements with them until its hand was finally forced by China ’s recent initiatives with ASEAN. [1004] There have been two recent illustrations of Japan ’s continued isolation. The first concerned its failed bid to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council in 2005
, when China succeeded in mobilizing most of the region in opposition to Japan’s proposed membership, thereby effectively torpedoing it. [1005] The second example was the anti-Japanese demonstrations in China in 2005, provoked partly by Japan’s UN bid but mainly by the publication of a new school history textbook in Japan that sought to downplay Japanese crimes against China during the last war; [1006] in this case, as in that of the United Nations, the sympathies of the region were overwhelmingly on the side of the Chinese rather than the Japanese government. [1007] In both instances, the underlying cause of Japan ’s isolation is the same: its failure to address not only China ’s grievances about the last war but nearly everyone else’s as well. [1008]

  China ’s rise requires a fundamental shift in Japanese thinking — indeed, Japan ’s interests would have been best served if it had been willing to address the wartime treatment of its neighbours several decades ago [1009] — but there remains little sign of it. Instead Japan has clung to variants of its post-war stance, with the result that China has succeeded, with the adroitness of its recent diplomacy in the region, in outmanoeuvring it. Meanwhile, the relationship between the two remains frozen in the manner of the Cold War, with each twist and turn being seen in terms of a zero-sum game. [1010] The issues of contention between the two are many, though the historical questions clearly predominate over all others. In terms of the present, by far the most important — and dangerous — issue concerns the disputed Senkaku/ Diaoyu islands and the similarly disputed maritime border in the East China Sea. [1011] There have already been clashes over the islands, most notably in 1990. [1012] Unlike the disputed islands in the South China Sea, there are known to be significant oil and gas deposits in the area, thereby lending them an added strategic significance. China has offered to shelve the issue of sovereignty, as it has done with the Spratlys, in favour of joint development, but the Japanese have rejected the idea. The Chinese, meanwhile, have begun exploration in a disputed area of sea. [1013] An agreement between the two countries on joint exploration and development would help to ease tension, though it would not resolve the underlying issue of sovereignty over the islands or the maritime border. [1014] Until some kind of agreement is reached, this dispute is the one most likely to provide a flashpoint between the two countries. [1015]

  At times of crisis, the Chinese government has tried hard to restrain popular attitudes of resentment towards Japan for fear that they might get out of control; sometimes, however, they have spilt over, as was the case with the large and angry demonstrations that took place in several Chinese cities in 2005. While Taiwan and the United States have been important factors in Chinese nationalism, especially in the 1990s, its growth has been driven, above all, by feelings of resentment and hostility towards Japan. These remain much stronger than the enmity displayed towards the United States. [1016] Apart from the Korean War, there is no history of conflict between China and the US. Moreover, the two countries succeeded in 1971 in remaking their relationship and putting it on an entirely new footing that has survived to the present day. They are also, of course, geographically separated by the expanse of the Pacific Ocean. In contrast, the bitter enmity between the Japanese and Chinese has existed for over a century without interruption. There is simply no modern tradition of compromise or coexistence between them and yet they are by far the two most powerful countries in East Asia. [1017] The Chinese may not particularly like the Americans but they generally respect them; in contrast, as I have frequently found, the Chinese — including the highly educated — will often volunteer that they hate the Japanese. [1018] The rise of China, moreover, has if anything served to harden attitudes towards Japan. As Shi Yinhong has observed, the view is now widely expressed that: ‘If China concedes to Japan it means that China cannot rise. What is the point of rising if we have to concede to Japan?’ [1019] It is, nonetheless, strongly in China ’s interests to play for time. Notwithstanding that Japan remains East Asia’s largest economy (according to GDP by market exchange rates) and by far its most advanced, time, as always it would seem, is on China’s side. Assuming that China continues to grow at a brisk pace, the balance of power between the two will continue to move in China’s favour, [1020] with the latter steadily emerging as the fulcrum of the East Asian economy. [1021] Even for Japan, China is now of great economic significance: it became Japan’s largest export market in 2008, overtaking the United States, with the value of Japanese exports to China doubling between 2000 and 2003, [1022] and it has also become an important manufacturing base for many Japanese multinationals. Japan, in short, is being drawn into a relationship of growing economic interdependence with China. But this does not mean that relations between the two countries will inevitably grow more harmonious: the underlying antagonism between them is far too deeply rooted for that.

  Map 12. The Disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands

  So how is the relationship between China and Japan likely to evolve? There are several possible scenarios. [1023] Hitherto, Japan has essentially regarded itself as different, and apart, from the region. As we have seen, that has been the case ever since the Meiji Restoration, with Japan looking up to the West and down on Asia. The fact that this mindset has been a fundamental characteristic of Japan ever since 1868 makes the task of changing it even more difficult and daunting. [1024] Since its defeat in the Second World War, Japan’s detachment from Asia has been reinforced by its military dependence on the United States, with the American defence guarantee obliging Japan to look east across the Pacific Ocean rather than west to its own continent, thereby encouraging it to think of itself as an Asia- Pacific rather than East Asian power. This is illustrated by the fact that in 2007 it concluded a security pact — its only other being with the United States — with Australia, the US’s closest ally in the Asia-Pacific region. Though both unstated and denied, the obvious target of the agreement is China. [1025] Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, the terms of its security and defence arrangement with the United States have been significantly strengthened over the last decade. [1026] The most likely scenario is that Japan continues along this same path. For the Japanese it has the great advantage of enabling them to carry on with the status quo and postponing the day when they are required to engage in a fundamental rethink — by far the biggest since 1868 — of their relationship with China in particular and East Asia in general. In China ’s eyes, however, the US-Japan alliance is only the second worst solution, the worst — such are China ’s fears of Japanese history — being a Japan that increasingly aspires to become a military force in its own right. [1027] The latter process is also under way, but it is taking place slowly and within the context of Japan ’s alliance with the United States, rather than separately from it. In the long run, however, dependence on the United States may be unsustainable. The growing economic, political and military strength of China could at some point oblige the Japanese to rethink their attitude towards China in a more positive way, while the United States may also be persuaded at some stage that its relationship with China is rather more important than that with Japan and that its alliance with Japan should effectively be downgraded, shelved or abandoned. But any such outcome, should it ever happen, still lies far in the future. [1028] The one scenario that seems inconceivable is that Japan emerges as a stand-alone superpower to rival China: it is simply too small, too particularistic, too isolated and too weakly endowed with natural resources to be able to achieve this. [1029]

  … AND THE ELEPHANT

  The elephant in the room or, more precisely the region, is the United States. The latter is not even vaguely part of East Asia, being situated thousands of miles to its east, but with its military alliance with Japan, its military bases in South Korea and its long-term support for Taiwan, not to mention the Korean and Vietnamese wars, it has been the dominant power in the region ever since it replaced Europe in the 1950s. That state of affairs, however, has begun to change with remarkable speed. A combination of 9/11 and the new turn in Chinese foreign policy in East Asia, togethe
r with China’s emergence as the fulcrum of the regional economy — one of those accidental juxtapositions of history — has transformed Chinese influence in the region, while that of the United States, hugely preoccupied with the Middle East to the virtual exclusion of all else, it would seem, declined sharply during the Bush presidency. [1030] Given that the period involved has been less than a decade, the shift in the balance of power in the region has been dramatic. In a few short years, every single country has been obliged to rethink its attitude towards China and in every case — excepting Japan and Taiwan (though, since the election of Ma Ying-jeou as president, perhaps even there too) — has moved appreciably closer to it, including Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand and South Korea, all of which have formal bilateral alliances with the United States. [1031] China ’s star in the region is patently on the rise and that of the United States on the wane. [1032]