Intense diplomatic competition between China and Japan shows tempers rising dangerously
HARDLY a day goes by without a new flare-up in the war of
diplomatic attrition being fought out by China and Japan. Japan is still
complaining about China’s declaration in November of an “Air Defence
Identification Zone” covering part of the East China Sea, including islands
controlled by Japan. China keeps condemning the visit on December 26th by
Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, to the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, where
among the war dead honoured are high-ranking war criminals. Since then more
than 30 Chinese ambassadors have invaded the op-ed pages of newspapers around
the world to accuse Japan of seeking to revive its militarist past. Japanese
diplomats have responded with articles accusing China of aggressive military
expansion.
Neither country is winning this war of words. This week it
moved to the World Economic Forum in Davos, where Mr Abe again criticised
China’s military build-up, and caused alarm by likening the rivalry between
China and Japan to that between Germany and Britain before the first world war.
Scare-mongering, perhaps. But it highlights the real risks in a diplomatic
quarrel that is usually seen as somewhere on the spectrum between amusing,
embarrassing and mildly alarming—like watching a dinner-party tiff as it
threatens to turn into fisticuffs. Most other countries see no reason to
intervene or take sides. Indeed, some may hope to benefit from this contest for
their loyalties.
Only in South Korea does the battle for public opinion
produce a clear winner. This week China rejected criticism from Japan of a
monument unveiled on January 19th in its northern city of Harbin to Ahn
Jung-geun, a Korean nationalist executed by Japan in 1910 after he had carried
out an assassination in the city. Japan regards Ahn, who killed Hirobumi Ito,
Japan’s colonial governor in Korea, as a “terrorist”. China’s spokesman,
however, calling him “a famous righteous man”, at once switched the
conversation to Mr Abe’s Yasukuni visit. South Korea’s ties with China are
flourishing and the country’s president, Park Geun-hye, requested this statue
be built when she was in China last June.
Elsewhere, however, the finger-pointing and name-calling has
made both countries look petty. The nadir has been the resort by envoys in
Britain to the Harry Potter books. Japan was Voldemort, said China’s
ambassador, referring to the evil wizard of the series. Displaying an
impressive familiarity with J.K. Rowling’s oeuvre, he added that
Yasukuni was a “horcrux”, a receptacle where the evil one secreted part of his
soul. Not so, retorted Japan’s ambassador, it is China that is playing
Voldemort, “letting loose the evil of an arms race and escalation of tensions”.
Just as unseemly was a row over a trip by Mr Abe to Côte
d’Ivoire, Mozambique and Ethiopia this month. The first visit to Africa by a
serving Japanese prime minister in eight years, it was designed to counter
China’s success in building diplomatic support and winning access to raw
materials. So Mr Abe made lavish offers of aid. A spokesman, making a tacit
comparison with China, noted that Japanese aid concentrated on helping young
people and women, not building “beautiful houses or beautiful ministerial
buildings”. In response, China’s ambassador to the African Union called Mr Abe
the biggest “troublemaker” in Asia and brandished photographs of Japanese
wartime atrocities.
China is sensitive to the charge that its oft-repeated
mantra of non-interference in other countries’ affairs is a cover for
unstinting support for any thug who happens to be in power at the moment. It
could have responded to Japan’s jab by accusing it of hypocrisy. Japan, too,
has at times been criticised in similar terms: it maintained humanitarian aid
for Myanmar, for example, when its former military junta was shunned by America
and Europe.
But China chose instead to talk about the war, even though
Japan has been at peace for 70 years and memories of wartime Asia resonate only
faintly in Africa. Even in countries with a direct experience of Japanese
occupation, China’s approach seems ineffective. Asian governments disapprove of
Mr Abe’s going to Yasukuni. But few seem worried by his plans to boost defence
spending. On the contrary, most quietly welcome it, being far more concerned
about China’s military build-up and its vigorous assertion of its claims in maritime
disputes.
So Mr Abe’s assiduous courtship of South-East Asia—he
visited all ten members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations in his
first year in office—is unlikely to be undone by anger over Yasukuni. China is
losing ground in the region. In Myanmar, for example, an opening to the West
since 2011 has been in part an attempt to be less dependent on China.
Cambodia’s strongman, Hun Sen, has long extolled the benefits of partnership
with China and its string-free aid. But he too is cultivating ties with Japan,
announcing a “strategic partnership” last month. China itself signalled a new
distance from its client when, unusually, its official news agency advised Mr
Hun Sen to pursue political reform.
Don’t mention the war
Thankfully, this is not yet the first world war, or even the
cold war, where Soviet and American allies fell into two mutually hostile
camps. Countries do not have to choose between China and Japan. Instead they
can hope the two countries’ mutual antipathy stokes competitive generosity.
That hope, however, is overshadowed by the fear that it might tip over into
conflict—that at this diplomatic dinner party, someone might actually throw a
punch.
For China, the lesson should be obvious. The way to win
support in its argument with Japan about history is less to excoriate Japan for
its past than to moderate its own present-day behaviour so that it is not seen
as a threat. In the South China Sea, for example, the Philippines and Vietnam
in particular accuse China of pursuing its territorial claims ever more
aggressively. For Japan, the moral is equally clear, though not to Mr Abe: do
not give China and others the chance to harp on about a war fought long ago by
reviving the past with visits to Yasukuni. By Banyan
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