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Tanaka's remarks bad for Japan

Japan's Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka, in a press interview on Dec. 25, apparently expressed her wish that Taiwan would be "quietly" returned to China the way Hong Kong was "in accordance with certain rules."

She added that Japan should make efforts so that the issue "will be smoothly resolved." I do not wish to make a personal attack on the foreign minister, who has been a subject of controversy since her appointment in April, but I think the substance of what she said should be of great concern, not only to Taiwan but also to Japan and the US as well.

In the case of Hong Kong, the UK signed a 99-year lease which expired in 1997 and Hong Kong's existence was impossible without the supply of water and other resources from the People's Republic of China. Neither of these conditions exists in the case of Taiwan.

First of all, despite Beijing's rhetoric that Taiwan is a renegade province of China, Taiwan has been ruled from the mainland of China for less than five of the last 105 years, has never been a part of the PRC and has been effectively ruled from the mainland of China for less than a decade in China's long history. Taiwan was ceded to Japan following the Sino-Japanese War and in 1932 communist Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東) called for Taiwan's independence along with Korea after the defeat of Japan.

Secondly, Taiwan, which China has historically regarded as outside its concern, is a nation of 23 million people, more than 85 percent of whom are native Taiwanese with local roots going back more than 200 years, with the world's 17th largest GNP. In the past decade it has become an impressively democratic republic which has twice elected a native Taiwanese as president; its economy is regularly rated as one of the world freest.

Of more importance to Japan and the US, China has quietly made incursions into much of the South China Sea, by measures such as declaring itself an archipelagic nation even though it is clearly not one in order to claim more of the ocean area as its exclusive economic zone, making claims on disputed territories such as Mischief Reef and the Spratly Islands and claiming its sovereignty over the Japanese claimed Senkaku Islands.

Chinese control over the South China Sea is today prevented primarily by the presence of the US Seventh Fleet in the western Pacific. But if China were to gain control of Taiwan "quietly" in a way similar to that in which it gained control of Hong Kong, Beijing would have a much more significant opportunity to control the entire South China Sea, even if its naval power were not as large as that of the US.

Thus the de facto continued independence of Taiwan is in the national interest of both Japan and the US.

China's control of Taiwan would be equivalent to its control of Okinawa and Korea. Would Foreign Minister Tanaka offer these to Beijing as well so that these issues, "will be smoothly resolved?"

The question which deserves to be asked, but which is often not raised owing to fears of upsetting Beijing, is whether Taiwan's independence needs to be formally declared or is difficult to maintain. Given the accomplishments of Taiwanese since 1991, the need for Taiwan to declare independence has become almost a meaningless question.

In 1991, former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) changed the Constitution of Taiwan to acknowledge that Taipei effectively has jurisdiction only over Taiwan and related islands.

Then, in 1996, Lee Teng-hui was elected president in Taiwan's first free election. Last year, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) became the second elected Taiwanese chief of state and its first outside of the KMT.

This year, the KMT lost its status as the largest party in Taiwan's legislature, completing the Taiwanization of the country.

In 1950, US president Harry Truman informed Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) that the US would not support his return to China; but at the same time Truman ordered the US Seventh Fleet to prevent a military takeover of Taiwan by the PRC.

This commitment remains today, even after former US president Bill Clinton unwisely and for personal reasons stated his so-called "three nos" in Shanghai, overwhelming majorities of Republicans and Democrats in the US. Congress immediately went on record reaffirming US support for Taiwan's integrity from invasion from Beijing.

Today, Taiwan not only has de facto independence; it is a de facto member of the US-Japan alliance and, as long as that is a fact, all China can do is complain; but, as long as Taiwan is a member of the US-Japan alliance, Beijing will respect Taiwan's freedom as well as its independence.

Which is better for the US and Japan? For Taiwan to "quietly" and "smoothly" become an unwilling victim of Chinese imperialism or for Taiwan to "quietly" and "smoothly" remain independent and aligned with Washington and Tokyo?

Certainly the latter is preferable and, to China's regret, it can be achieved quietly and smoothly as long as the US and Japan maintain their strategic focus and as long as the US maintains its principle to prevent Taiwan from being forcibly absorbed into a communist state.

To say otherwise is to unnecessarily accede to China's straw- man argument that Taiwan is a renegade republic of China.

Will China's appetite be satiated after it incorporates Taiwan? When I visited Okinawa in 1999, a local fisherman asked me what I thought of then governor Ota's demand that the US withdraw within 15 years. I told him I wondered if Ota thought Okinawa would be more secure if US forces did so.

The fisherman responded to me, "We would lose our lives; please never leave Okinawa." I could understand that fisherman's grasp of strategy better than I could understand the Dec. 25 statement of Foreign Minister Tanaka.

James Auer is a professor of Vanderbilt University and former special assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Japanese affairs.
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