Let’s play the blame game. Let’s bash
the Japanese government for ratcheting up tension. Bad, bad Japanese, right?
Isn’t it just that simple?
Since May 3, 1947, Japanese people have lived (and on
the whole lived graciously and productively) under the embrace of an
American-concocted constitution that with determination tied its defense forces
up in restrictive Article 9. But look how well it worked out: Japan became one
of the world’s greatest economies — until very recently, the No1 economy in
Asia.
But now Shinzo Abe, working to realise his dream of
dumping this iconic and ironic legacy of the World War II in history’s dustbin,
looks to be on the verge of […] triumph! The prime minister has his party and
party allies just a legislative click or two away from expanding the leeway
(and budget) of the Self-Defense Forces when they have a need to “defend
Japan”, or help out allies, or whatever.
Of course, Japan-bashers are quick with the mean-genes
argument: isn’t it telling that Abe’s mother was the daughter of Nobusuke
Kishi, who, before becoming the 37th prime minister, distinguished himself as a
member of the Tojo Cabinet. No escaping those genes, eh?
Maybe, but here is what is far more interesting to me:
that in his moment of political triumph, Abe’s move elicited such a tepid
response from the Japanese people — seemingly far from a gung-ho one in which
they pull their samurai swords from the attic. One can imagine that colossally
losing a world war — including a pair of atomic bombs dropped on two of their
cities, leaving survivors and their children with a grim genetic legacy — might
just take the fizz out of the champagne.
So how in the world did Abe carry the day against the
admirably noble (and smartly pragmatic) pacifism of the Japanese people? What
was the secret behind his mini-coup? Someone must have stepped up big time to
help him peddle the idea of military renewal to a populace that on the whole
had been saying: “No, we’ve been down that road before — never again.”What in
the world happened?
Part of the answer is to be found in the government’s
recent defense white paper, its message as obvious as the Great Wall of China.
At its centre is general obsession, and in the text are many particulars.
There’s the well-documented Chinese naval build-up, the potent policy influence
of a possibly semi-sovereign People’s Liberation Army (reflected in Chinese
President Xi Jinping’s campaign to tame it), and China’s fast and furious land
reclamation and sandbar resurrection projects, which Beijing says are more like
open-to-all neighborhood recreation centers, but which most normal people say
surely look like burgeoning military bases.
Japan’s white paper concludes: Beijing is “poised to fulfill
its unilateral demands without compromise” by the blunt instrumentality of
“coercive attempts to change the status quo”. Is it just Orwellian-style
propaganda, hyped-up fodder to justify a major Japanese arms build-up? Or is it
the plausible worry of a concerned government responsibly warning its people?
If your inclination is to go Orwellian, fine, but half of non-Chinese Asia
agrees with the idea that the challenge of China is no joke. Most of the other
half doesn’t know what to think but is nonetheless unnerved. (What’s left is a
few countries quietly pocketing aid from Beijing and remaining dutifully
silent.)So whatever Abe is up to, he is not the only guy in Asia who’s got
China on his mind. The Philippines, not exactly in the forefront of diplomatic
pugnacity, has its bright lawyers at The Hague bringing questions before the
UN-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration. Other governments are siding with
Manila.
Arms-buying binges are in progress. Governments are
snapping up surveillance planes and naval equipment, as if to ensure no more
lonely reefs or sandbars are sand-castled up overnight into landing strips
without anyone knowing about it.
And then you have the senior head of the Communist
Party of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, obviously rattled and trying for
all the world to seem sincere and contrite, showing up at the White House the
other day, looking for a little love.
There you have it: the changing geopolitical landscape
of Asia.
To be fair, China does have plausible cases for much
of what it’s doing in the East and South China seas, along with the gut belief
that it is its historical right to take whatever it can before anyone stops
them, which is exactly what some neighbors had been doing decades before.
One thing is certain: all these moves have started to
make Abe look less like a menace than a responsible leader. And who should get
credit if that remarkable image transformation comes into full focus? It does
take two to tango. In the last year or so, China has presented to the world not
the “peaceful rising” image but the “we’re rising and you’re not” image.
China’s new Asia-wide infrastructure investment
program and its hope to take the lead in forging a modern Silk Road and all the
rest might some day add up to a kind of Central Asian Marshall Plan. If so,
this will be applauded by all and greatly honored by history. But in the
meantime, Beijing might consider that it would be in its best national interest
to treat its neighbors with a more tender touch. Abe could be made to look like
a political moderate if China proceeds apace on its current course. Yes, China
has such power. But that’s not diplomacy.
And it is not smart. Its diplomacy needs to be woven
of much finer Chinese silk.
China does have plausible cases for much of what it’s
doing in the East and South China seas.
The
writer, Tom Plate, Los Angeles, California the author of Conversations with Lee
Kuan Yew, is the distinguished scholar
of Asian and Pacific Studies at Loyola Marymount University. The article first
appeared in the South China Morning Post
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