The Law of Unintended Consequences has been operative once again, this time in the intense Japanese reaction to several weeks of Chinese demonstrations against Japan, some of them violent. In a word, the eruption in China has backfired in Japan.
Ten days of conversations with Japanese government officials, diplomats, business executives, military officers, academics, journalists and private citizens in Tokyo and Kyoto have turned up a deep-seated anger against China that is likely to be long-lasting.
Moreover, many Japanese have added a disdain for South Korea due to what they see as Seoul's echo of China's anti-Japanese posture, always an easy position for Koreans to take because of Japan's 35-year occupation of Korea that ended in 1945.
"They have gone over to the Chinese side," a Japanese diplomat said with a wave of his hand.
For the US, the antagonism between China and South Korea on one side and Japan on the other has confronted the Bush administration with a dangerous dispute that could corrode the US' power in East Asia if the antagonism gets much worse.
So far, the administration, consumed with the war in Iraq, seems to have ignored the issue even though the US has security treaties with Japan and South Korea and has been seeking working relations with China to cope with North Korea's nuclear ambitions and to assist in the war on terror.
The China question is pervasive in Japan. The press and television news have been filled with discussions of how Japan should respond. Popular weekly news magazines have carried a flock of special reports and almost every conversation, no matter how casual, quickly turns to China's anti-Japanese stance.
Even a sushi chef in Kyoto got into an animated discussion late one evening after most of his customers had left.
"The anti-Japanese uprising in China," he said, "does not serve the interests of either China or South Korea or Japan."
Many Japanese think they can do nothing to persuade the Chinese and Koreans to relent. They point to 18 or 20 apologies for World War II, including the recent one by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, and to US$30 billion in economic aid that has helped to build China's industrial infrastructure. Japan has extended similar aid to South Korea, but has failed to get credit for it in either case. Now the Japanese seem to have given up.
"No matter what we do, the Chinese and Koreans will always demand more," is a common refrain.
One diplomat said: "The Chinese and Koreans have been educating their people for more than a generation to hate Japan. It will take another generation to undo that."
The demonstrations, including rock-throwing assaults on Japan's embassy in Beijing, were evidently intended to intimidate Japan into diplomatic submission. Instead, the Japanese have become defiant.
"Among my friends, the general feeling is `enough is enough,'" a musician said.
Chinese protesters last month and early this month carried scores of placards demanding that Japanese reflect on their country's invasion of China during World War II. Instead, the Japanese asserted that the Chinese themselves were guilty of millions of deaths during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s.
The protests, encouraged by the Chinese government, were intended to force Japan to give up its campaign to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Instead, Japan is seeking international support. India, Germany, Brazil and Japan have jointly asked to enter the Security Council, which complicates China's opposition. The Chinese rallies, during which the police did not intervene, were intended to drive a wedge between Japan and the US. Instead, said another Japanese diplomat: "We must do everything we can to strengthen our alliance with the United States."
The Chinese intended to dissuade Japan from building up its armed forces and becoming a "normal nation." Instead, they have accelerated moves to revise the famed Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, the "no-war clause" that forbids Japan from using military power.
China intended to dampen speculation that Japan, alarmed by North Korea's nuclear ambitions, might go nuclear.
"I don't believe we should have nuclear arms," a scholar said, "but we should consider it."
Some Japanese said the way to prevent Japan from acquiring nuclear arms would be for the US to reiterate its commitment to Japan's defense, including an explicit pledge to retaliate if Japan were to be attacked with a nuclear weapon. To be effective, said a strategic thinker, such a pledge should come from US President George W. Bush.
Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.
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
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017