Chinese officials, including Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) who will be visiting Japan this week, have been optimistic that relations between China and Japan are on the brink of a breakthrough. Both sides have raised the possibility of some framework for future annual visits by their leaders, which they said would become a symbol of strategic and mutually beneficial relations.
Buttressing these high hopes is the fact that Hu has played up the visit in a manner that dovetails with China’s efforts to convince its neighbors that its rise is a peaceful one. Whether it is the result of the torrent of bad publicity since the Olympic torch relay began or a heartfelt desire to improve relations between the two Asian giants, Hu’s approach has been much more conciliatory than that of his predecessors.
In fact, a joint document — the fourth of its kind since the Japan-China Joint Communique of 1972 — to be released by Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and Hu following their summit tomorrow will minimize China’s hitherto stern insistence that Japan “reflect” on its historical “responsibility,” as was the case with the declaration that capped former Chinese president Jiang Zemin’s (江澤民) unsuccessful visit to Tokyo in 1998. Rather, it is said that the new document will be “future-oriented” and focus on resolving issues of mutual concern.
Perhaps as a trading chip, it is said that the communique will include no reference to the recent crackdown in Tibet, which it will treat as an internal issue.
But there are a few sticking points that are sure to put clouds among the high hopes for clearer skies in Sino-Japanese relations.
The first is the fact that Japan will express no outright opposition to Taiwanese independence in the joint statement, something that Beijing had vehemently requested. Rather, Tokyo will maintain its position that it does not support a unilateral move toward independence by Taipei. This is good news for Taiwan, which would have been dealt a severe blow had Tokyo abandoned its longstanding position on the issue.
By doing so, the Fukuda administration will be giving Taipei enough latitude to negotiate without the handicap of a substantive ally that has been muzzled. Tokyo’s refusal to change its position also underscores Taiwan’s continued importance in Japan’s strategic sphere and outer area of defense.
Which brings us to the second likely sticking point: the Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition’s efforts, spearheaded by a referendum last year, to amend Article 9 of the Constitution, which since the end of World War II has made pacifism the modus operandi in Japan’s international relations. Pressured by the US to play a greater role in international security, some elements in Tokyo have seen this as an opportunity to break the shackles of the Constitution and give the military more opportunities to participate in missions abroad.
While the desire for a reinterpretation of Article 9 is a long way from overt militarism, Beijing is unlikely to react kindly to such developments — especially if it interprets the measures as a sign of a resurgent Japanese military or a means for the US and Japan to constrain China’s actions internationally.
If any of these scenarios come about, the vaunted Hu-Fukuda communique won’t be worth the paper it is written on, and the annual visits could very well be replaced by the alacrity that has lurked under the surface of Sino-Japanese relations since the war ended.
A failure by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to respond to Israel’s brilliant 12-day (June 12-23) bombing and special operations war against Iran, topped by US President Donald Trump’s ordering the June 21 bombing of Iranian deep underground nuclear weapons fuel processing sites, has been noted by some as demonstrating a profound lack of resolve, even “impotence,” by China. However, this would be a dangerous underestimation of CCP ambitions and its broader and more profound military response to the Trump Administration — a challenge that includes an acceleration of its strategies to assist nuclear proxy states, and developing a wide array
Twenty-four Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers are facing recall votes on Saturday, prompting nearly all KMT officials and lawmakers to rally their supporters over the past weekend, urging them to vote “no” in a bid to retain their seats and preserve the KMT’s majority in the Legislative Yuan. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which had largely kept its distance from the civic recall campaigns, earlier this month instructed its officials and staff to support the recall groups in a final push to protect the nation. The justification for the recalls has increasingly been framed as a “resistance” movement against China and
Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康), former chairman of Broadcasting Corp of China and leader of the “blue fighters,” recently announced that he had canned his trip to east Africa, and he would stay in Taiwan for the recall vote on Saturday. He added that he hoped “his friends in the blue camp would follow his lead.” His statement is quite interesting for a few reasons. Jaw had been criticized following media reports that he would be traveling in east Africa during the recall vote. While he decided to stay in Taiwan after drawing a lot of flak, his hesitation says it all: If
Saturday is the day of the first batch of recall votes primarily targeting lawmakers of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). The scale of the recall drive far outstrips the expectations from when the idea was mooted in January by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘). The mass recall effort is reminiscent of the Sunflower movement protests against the then-KMT government’s non-transparent attempts to push through a controversial cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014. That movement, initiated by students, civic groups and non-governmental organizations, included student-led protesters occupying the main legislative chamber for three weeks. The two movements are linked
RSS