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
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Tuesday last week apologized over allegations that the former director of the city’s Civil Affairs Department had illegally accessed citizens’ data to assist the KMT in its campaign to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors. Given the public discontent with opposition lawmakers’ disruptive behavior in the legislature, passage of unconstitutional legislation and slashing of the central government’s budget, civic groups have launched a massive campaign to recall KMT lawmakers. The KMT has tried to fight back by initiating campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers, but the petition documents they
RSS