Recently China and South Korea have been leading the drive to prevent Japan from gaining a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun has publicly criticized Japan for trying to secure a UN Security Council seat while the Chinese have staged a series of anti-Japanese demonstrations in several major cities in China. These actions are likely to have considerable political ramifications for the East Asian region.
The anti-Japanese sentiment among the Chinese and Korean public has been smoldering for decades. The flames of this resentment have been fuelled as a result of Japan's approval of a new history textbook, its constant territorial disputes with neighboring countries, its bid for a permanent UN Security Council seat and annual visits by senior political figures to a Tokyo shrine honoring Japan's war dead. There are indeed several very intricately intertwined reasons behind the recent wave of anti-Japanese sentiment. But the politicization in China and South Korea of their grievances has left its mark on Tokyo-Beijing and Tokyo-Seoul relations.
Roh is anti-Japanese mainly because of South Korea's territorial dispute with Japan over the Tokdo Islands in the Sea of Japan. Faced with growing domestic economic problems and a vigorous opposition, Roh, with his minority party in parliament, could only adopt an anti-Japanese stance.
However, the economic and trade cooperation between Japan and Korea have greatly improved in recent years. Since former president Kim Dae-jung made his first visit to Japan in 2000, both sides have managed to co-exist without engendering any new conflict. Moreover, over the past two years, Korean artist Bae Yong-jun and the pop culture he represents have surprisingly taken Japan by storm. Obviously, the root of the problem of the Tokyo-Seoul relations is simpler than that of the Tokyo-Beijing relationship.
In February, just when the Chinese were celebrating the Lunar New Year holidays, the Japanese government suddenly dispatched troops to take over the lighthouse on the disputed Diaoyutai (Senkaku) Islands. However, Beijing manipulated its media not to respond, so that the public did not react fiercely. Why did Beijing seem to be avoiding confrontation with Tokyo over the lighthouse issue? Firstly, Beijing hoped that Tokyo would be supportive of its anti-secession legislation, which was already in the pipeline. Secondly, Beijing was concerned over whether Tokyo was planning to stop large parts of its development aid to China. Now these two issues have been settled and the anti-Japanese protests have taken center stage. In China, people are not generally allowed to take their opinions to the streets. Without the government's go-head, it is impossible for people to stage large-scale demonstrations, particularly in four major cities in China. Therefore, it is possible that the recent rallies have been orchestrated by the government.
Nowadays, Chinese foreign-affairs personnel differ widely over Japan policy. Even though the conventional approach of treating Japanese relations from a historical perspective is still dominant, there are some officials who believe a new approach should be adopted in bilateral relations.
Both China and Japan are now, for the first time, considered two of the world's great powers. We do not know yet what impact the new situation will have on the East Asian region. Whether China will rise peacefully or whether its actions will unnerve its neighbors depend on Beijing's Taiwan policy and the development of Sino-Japanese relations.
Antonio Chiang is the former deputy secretary general to the National Security Council.
Translated by Daniel Cheng
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
RSS