When it joined the US last month in a security agreement identifying Taiwan as a shared security concern, Japan shifted its stance on the Taiwan issue from ambiguity to clarity, the country's former representative to Japan said yesterday.
Lo Fu-chen (羅福全), president of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Association of East Asian Relations and Taiwan's envoy to Japan from 2000 to last year, said in an interview that the Japan-US declaration marked a new policy of "dissuasion" of China, as opposed to the containment strategy pursued by the US against communism after World War II.
In light of China's military expansion and its passage of the "Anti-Secession" Law, Tokyo and Washington, by establishing the dissuasion strategy, hope to see China turned into a constructive power rather than a military threat, Lo said.
Japan and the US teamed up to dissuade China, the third party, from resorting to non-peaceful means to solve its problems with Taiwan. As the US transforms its military deployment in the Far East, Lo said, Japan would provide support for the US forces wherever possible.
Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, which states that Japan can never maintain land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, restricts the country's present military role. Nevertheless, Lo said there is a desire on the US part for Japan to amend Article 9 in order to take a more active military role.
"When I was the representative to Japan, the Bush administration sent an official to Japan discussing the amendment of Article 9. The war ended 60 years ago and the US wanted Japan to become a normal country," Lo said.
Since Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and US President George W. Bush took power, the two countries' relationship has improved remarkably and is now "in its best ever shape" since the end of World War II, Lo said.
* Date of Birth: May 8, 1935
* Place of Birth: Taiwan
* Education: BA, Economics, National Taiwan University; MA, Economics, Waseda University; PhD, Economics, University of Pennsylvania
* Career: Visiting scholar, University of Pennsylvania; chief economist of Asian and Pacific Development Center; representative to Japan, 2000-2004
* Interests/Hobbies: Chinese calligraphy, painting and reading
* Publications: ``Emerging World Cities in Pacific Asia,'' ``Globalization and the World of Large Cities''
The strengthening Japan-US alliance and the possible amendment of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution indicate that Japan could cooperate with forces of the US, which has obligations under the Taiwan Relations Act to defend Taiwan, the official added.
The Taiwan Strait is too shallow for Chinese submarines to conduct activities; therefore, the submarines have to carry out military exercises in waters east of Taiwan. To get there, the submarines, which set off from Qingdao, have to pass two Japanese islands, Ishigaki and Miyako, Lo explained.
Japan will now deploy 400 soldiers to the two islands, which are part of Okinawa Prefecture. The intrusion of a Chinese submarine into waters between the two islands last November, Lo said, showed that China is now capable of putting its armed forces beyond what its military calls the "first island-chain" to the "second island-chain."
In Chinese military planning, the first and second island chains describe the sphere of influence that China expects to achieve in the Pacific Ocean. The first chain stretches from Japan though Okinawa, Taiwan and the Philippines to Brunei. The second chain extends further east and to Australia's doorstep.
Shortly after the Chinese Han-class submarine was detected in Japanese waters last November, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) told a group of Japanese officials that Taipei informed Tokyo that the submarine broke into its waters.
Japan denied Chen's claim, which led the Presidential Office to express regret over Japan's stance on the incident. Lo, however, said that neither side has lied about the submarine incident.
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