The White Peril 白禍

The Nikkei had an uncharacteristically squishy editorial about China-Japan relations the other day--squishy in that its recommendations were airy and unspecific:

Japan-PRC relations have been deteriorating for a while, but one can't help feeling especially anxious over the "war of condemnations" between the two governments since last month. On 8 February, Chinese State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan told a visiting group from the Japan-China Society, "We have no no more hopes for Prime Minister Koizumi."

On 7 March, PRC Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing harshly criticized Prime Minister Koizumi's pilgimages to the Yasukuni Shrine as "an imbecilic and immoral thing" at a National People's Congress press conference. Li's indignant manner was not characteristic of him. Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe countered, "It is inappropriate to criticize the leaders of other nations in terms so lacking in dignity." Quite so.

But on the other hand, on the Japanese side, Minister of Foreign Affairs Taro Aso has provoked the Chinese by repeatedly referring to Taiwan as a "country" (4 February, 9 March). Aso emended his statement on 9 March, stating, "Well, it's accurate to call it a 'territory,'" but there are reports in China that there are doubts there about whether the slip of the tongue was really unintentional. It's aberrant for those responsible for diplomatic relations between the two countries to repeatedly express themselves in ways that betray loss of a sense of good citizenship. [Our leaders] must not lose their reason and decorum in dealing with each other.

In the midst of all this, PRC Premier Wen Jiabao held a press conference for domestic and foreign journalists at which he tersely indicated what China's provisional Japan policy is. Of relations between the two countries while Prime Minister Koizumi, who continues to make pilgrimages to the Yasukuni Shrine, is in office, Wen stated, "Smooth progress has hit extraordinary obstacles, but the responsibility lies with the leaders of Japan," thereby differentiating between the public and its leaders.

What makes it so squishy is the way it the way it focuses paragraph after paragraph on failures of nice-making and then gives its most concrete policy recommendation in a single blink-and-you-miss-it sentence later on: "Through expansion of exchange and economic cooperation between our peoples, we can prevent the deterioration of political relations from having a deleterious influence on economics and trade."

Well, sure. Liberalized trade is likely to strengthen bonds between China and Japan and make occasional diplomatic eruptions of their ancient enmity less damaging. But Japan still needs to draw lines about what it is and is not willing to concede. Could it make things easier on itself if Koizumi were less obstinate about the Yasukuni Shrine pilgrimages and Aso occasionally learned to rein it in about...well, anything? It's reasonable to think so. At the same time, the CCP is not populated by idiots. China knows how useful it is to be able to divert its citizens' dissatisfaction with their own rulers in the direction of Japan. (Remember last year's demonstrations.)

But let's not forget that Koizumi is no dummy himself. The course he's steering doesn't look so wise right now, given that things have gone from a cessation of meetings between heads of state to an open expression by the PRC that it doesn't think it can deal with Japan while he's running the government. After all, despite the PRC's operatic gestures of woundedness over Japan's bad faith, it's difficult to assess how much regional friction would actually be lessened if Japan decided to keep its own counsel about Taiwan and to stop the Yasukuni pilgrimages. China could very easily channel more of its animosity into the issue of development of East China Sea gas fields, or Japan's ongoing joint military programs with the US. Both of those are in and of themselves issues of material, and not just symbolic, significance. Perhaps Koizumi thinks he can smooth the way for more concessions from China on things that matter come this autumn if he's combative enough to make his successors look accommodating by comparison.

This is par for the course in my adopted corner of the world:

"It's a law-abiding state that has a mature democratic system and, in economic terms, espouses liberal economic policies. It's a country whose values Japan shares." So saying, Minister of Foreign Affaird Taro Aso, at a lower house budgetary committee meeting on 9 March, called Taiwan a "state." Immediately thereafter, he corrected himself: "Well, I'm speaking on the premise that China is recognized as one unified legal government. Fundamentally, it would be accurate to say, 'territory.'" However, there are those who are discomfited by such repeated "off-message" expressions, which are at odds with the official position taken within the government.

The LDP's Naoki Okada responded to Aso's backpedaling with "How do we get a handle on Taiwan strategically?"

The question is not an idle one, given the state of economics and diplomacy in the region. Naturally, the PRC was spitting nickels:

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang called on Japan to honor its commitments made to China over the status of Taiwan, reiterating Beijing's stance that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China.

"China strongly protests this crude interference in its internal affairs," Qin said, expressing "surprise that a high-ranking Japanese diplomat would make such remarks."

Aso has ruffled Chinese feathers repeatedly in recent months, most recently by accusing Beijing of using female spies to seduce Japanese diplomats and later blackmail them for classified information.

He also triggered protests from Beijing by calling China a significant threat in Asia, and suggesting that Taiwan's high educational standards were a legacy of Tokyo's 1895-1945 colonial rule over the island.

Japan, you may recall, plays the "interference in internal affairs" card about the Yasukuni Shrine pilgrimage issue frequently.

I don't think I ever posted about Aso's honey of a comment about Taiwan's education standards, BTW. The Nikkei cites part of it in the above article: "Taiwan has kept up with the times because it is a country with an extremely high level of education, thanks to improvements in literacy rates [during the occupation]." (In that bit, he called Taiwan a 国, which can be and usually is translated "country" but can also mean "province," but unlike yesterday didn't use the word 国家, which very explicitly denotes a "state" or "nation.") It doesn't seem to me unreasonable to point out that some of Japan's policies benefited the Taiwanese in some ways--though perhaps part of that is due to my American public education, in which a good half of the time spent on social science seems to be devoted to the complex legacies of colonial rule.

As the foreign minister, though, you'd think Aso would be diplomatic enough to have put in something along the lines of "our forebears did many things for both better and worse in Taiwan, but surely one accomplishment for which we can safely honor them is...." And given that a half-century has passed since Japan left Taiwan, it's rather odd not to acknowledge that the Taiwanese educational system wouldn't be of the high caliber it is were it not for the diligence of the Taiwanese themselves in keeping it up since then. The PRC accused Aso of "glamourizing colonization" in that case, BTW.