Beijing has rejected the alleged statement by the influential Japanese Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmaker Shoichi Nakagawa that at the rate Beijing is expanding its military capabilities, Japan could end up a province of China.
After several double digit increases in defense budget over the years, China is going to notch up another 17.8 percent this year, about 351 billion yuan (US$45 billion). The actual defense spending, some Western analysts say, is three times that amount.
Lately, Japan has come to regard China as a security threat. Discounting its hyperbole, Nakagawa's statement in essence re-states a known position. More interesting, though, was his linking of Japan and Taiwan's destinies.
As Nakagawa put it: "If something goes wrong in Taiwan in the next 15 years, we [in Japan] might also become just another Chinese province within 20 years or so."
Of course, Nakagawa is not the government and his statement was therefore not an official pronouncement. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appears to have dissociated himself from Nakagawa's comments. But this doesn't augur well for Sino-Japanese relations, which Abe had sought to improve.
Whether Nakagawa's fear of Japan becoming another Chinese province at some point in time is overdrawn or not is beside the point. What he has done is highlight the sense of anxiety felt by many Japanese with regards to the so-called rise of China.
As a result of the Chinese buildup, Japan appears to be feeling increasingly vulnerable. There are several reasons for this. China's growing military might, which has expanded every year as a result of the increases in defense budgets, is the main reason. China's recent missile test, during which an aging satellite was shot down, is an example of a technological leap in its capacity to wage war in space.
Japan is not alone in having voiced concerns about China's growing military might. During his recent visit to Australia, US Vice President Dick Cheney did the same with regard to China's anti-satellite missile test and military buildup. What worries the US most is the lack of transparency about Beijing's aims as it builds up its military.
US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte is reported to have said that the US would like to know "what China has in mind with respect to its military modernization, what the doctrines are that underlie this and what their intentions are."
Obviously, the worries Tokyo shares with Washington are providing it some comfort, if not security. Deep down, however, Japan is not entirely happy with the fact that its security is largely dependent on the US.
This is not to suggest that the Japanese are spending all their time worrying about their vulnerability. But they do seem to nurse a sense of having been wronged, thus turning their wartime guilt from World War II into a sense of victimhood. One consequence of this has been Tokyo's denial of past crimes.
One recent example of this is the denial of the use of sex slaves -- "comfort women" -- by Japanese soldiers during World War II. The spectacle of recounting these atrocities in the US House of Representatives by the 84-year old Jan Ruff O'Herne, a Dutch sex slave during the war who now lives in Australia, is a living testimony of the suffering and humiliation of some 200,000 women forced into prostitution.
On this and other questions of war crimes, the US is not willing to bail out Japan, choosing instead to advise Tokyo to sort it out with other concerned Asian countries.
China, meanwhile, will enjoy the spectacle of Japan being slammed in the US Congress while a global audience looks on.
"Beijing rests its case," it might say to itself.
China, of course, has its own demons. Since the Chinese Communist Party victory in 1949, the regime, which killed an estimated 50 million of its people through acts of omission and commission, has been largely spared by history books whose authors have chosen -- or been forced -- to remain silent on this tragedy of unequalled proportion.
The danger that China's rise represents for Japan, however, is not simply its expanding military power but also its skillful political exploitation of Japan's war crimes. And Japan, as recent events have shown, is playing into China's hands.
Beijing seems to have a virtually free hand diplomatically in the Asia-Pacific region, as the US is mired in the Middle East and has relied on China to curb North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
For Japan to become an alternative political and economic power to in the Asia-Pacific, it will have to deal with its wartime past by acknowledging its role and making amends. Germany has done it and continues to do it and is now not only a leading member of the EU but a respected member of the global community. Japan can similarly fill that role in Asia as the world's second-largest economy, but that is contingent on its commitment to look at its past with honesty and the abandonment of its misguided sense of victimhood.
Once it begins dealing with its wartime past, Tokyo can simultaneously take all the necessary initiatives to establish its political, economic and moral stature without having to expend all its energies in devising a reactive and defensive approach.
This is not to suggest that the strategy of facing its wartime past will work miracles and produce instant results. Tokyo seems to fear that any acknowledgement of its past will open a Pandora's Box of claims and demands for compensations. It therefore takes shelter behind the standard response that all issues resulting from the war were settled as part of the peace treaty in early 1950s.
Whatever its worth, dealing with its wartime past could free Japan from always having it shoved in its face and therefore liberate the country from the shackles of this historical time warp.
Japan's US alliance remains its best guarantee of security against a resurgent China, which should enable it to galvanize its political and economic resources to deny Beijing the space to isolate and contain Japan in the region.
Sushil Seth is a writer based in Australia.
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