The recent surge in violent anti-Japanese protests in China has sent a shiver of alarm across East Asia -- and not least in Taiwan, the country with most to lose if rising Chinese nationalist sentiment translates into future military aggression.
Many of the causes of Sino-Japanese tensions are specific to those two countries. New school textbooks that glossed over wartime Japanese atrocities in China sparked the latest furore. The row coincided with a nationwide, government-sponsored campaign to block Japan's bid for a UN Security Council seat.
Relations between Tokyo and Beijing have been deteriorating since Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi came to power in 2001 and started annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, where Japan's 2.5 million war dead are commemorated along with several convicted war criminals.
Chinese officials say these visits, and the offending textbooks, prove that Japan is unrepentant about its militaristic past.
But while old wounds still fester, both sides may fairly be said to have mishandled a modern-day relationship that is important to both. Although not formally termed reparations, Japan has given significant economic aid to China since 1972 when diplomatic relations were restored. Annual trade is now worth about US$178 billion.
Japan's trade with China grew by 27 percent last year.
But while Japan may have neglected non-economic aspects of the relationship, China appears to have underestimated the impact of a new assertiveness in Japanese foreign policy evident under Koizumi. Japan is gradually loosening the straitjacket of its post-war pacifist constitution. For example, it sent troops to Iraq, albeit in non-combat roles.
And to China's dismay, it recently declared maintenance of peace in the Taiwan Strait to be a joint strategic objective with the US.
It is at this point in the story that Sino-Japanese strains take on a wider, regional significance. Japan is far from being the only country in East Asia concerned at China's rapid military build-up. It is not the only neighbor with unresolved territorial or maritime disputes with Beijing. Nor is Japan alone in carrying the burden of a shared history of enmity and bloodshed.
Despite last week's bridge-building visit to New Delhi by Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao (
And the possibly domineering role that China may assume in the mooted East Asia Community is of serious concern to the 10 members of the ASEAN as they prepare for this December's groundbreaking East Asian Summit in Kuala Lumpur.
But it is in Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a renegade province, that the surge in mainland Chinese nationalist feeling and externally-projected hostility is seen as most immediately threatening. It follows a steady military build-up across the Taiwan Strait. And it comes hard on the heels of China's so-called "Anti-Secession" Law that threatens non-peaceful means to unify Taiwan with the mainland.
"While the target may be Japan this time around, in the future such feverish nationalism may have serious implications for Taiwan," the Taipei Times said in a weekend editorial. "Once Chinese aggression begins, the prime target will be either Japan or Taiwan.
"But Taiwan has more reason to worry ... We should all be alarmed," the editorial said.
Speaking in a recent interview, Deputy Minister of National Defense Michael Tsai (
"We expect that total [of 700 missiles] to increase to 800 by 2006, including about 100 long-range missiles capable of delivering a warhead more than 12,000km -- capable of hitting California or any part of the Pacific region, including Korea and Japan," Tsai said.
Taiwanese can take some small comfort from the fact that China appears to have miscalculated the international impact of its Anti-Secession Law. The law is the principal reason why the EU has decided to delay, until next year at least, its plan to lift its post-Tiananmen arms embargo.
It has also helped refocus the Bush administration's attention on Taiwan and other China-related issues, disturbing its long-running fixation on Iraq and Middle Eastern terrorism. US President George W. Bush made a point last week of drawing attention to human-rights failings and restrictions on religious observance in China. "We expect there to be peace in Taiwan,"Bush said.
The Pentagon is in the midst of a review of its strategy in the Pacific. And according to reports in Israel, the US, which is pledged to assisting Taiwan's self-defense, has cut the Israeli government out of a new fighter-plane project, called the F-35, in protest at its arms sales to Beijing.
In these respects, it seems clear that the government-permitted anti-Japanese ructions are serving to remind Washington and Europe, as well as Beijing's neighbors, that China is much more than an economic opportunity. It poses a strategic challenge that could become everyone's problem.
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