The nationalist outcry to the detention of the Chinese boat captain in Japan after fishing off the Senkaku/Diaoyutai islands and the subsequent ban on exports of rare earth materials demonstrates the willingness of China to defend its interests beyond its national borders and defend territories which it believe it has the right to govern[1]—something Japan and many other countries in Asian Pacific are increasingly concerned. For it has been almost a century and a half since the Middle Kingdom was the great imperial it once was.
For centuries, the Middle Kingdom created a vassal state system in East Asia, with leaders from Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and other nations paying tribute by performing the koutou to the Chinese emperor in exchange for aid and protection. However, by the mid-19th century the Manchu Qing dynasty was bankrupt both economically and politically. The Opium Wars in 1840-42 opened Chinese markets to British and other Western nations giving them large territories. Japan took a different route when Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo Harbor in 1853 by emulating and eventually surpassing Western military tactics and strength. Gregory Moore notes that “Japan’s rise as a power coincided with China’s decline. In the first half of the twentieth century China became known as the ‘sick man of Asia”[2] while the militant ultranationalists in Japan became so proficient at war as to defeat China in 1895 and take control of Taiwan, Russia in 1905, Korea in 1910, China again to a devastating extent between 1931 and 1945, and eventually taking control of Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, and other Asian regions, and ultimately performing a daring surprise attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor in 1945.
This last move ended up being the Japanese downfall, for the United States would defeat Japan in August 1945, and with the advent of the Cold War, the US realized that it was geo-strategically important to keep Japan under the its security umbrella. Although Japan never remilitarized and sought economic development instead, the tensions between them and the mainland never abated. The war crimes committed against the Chinese people during the occupation included such atrocities as ‘comfort women’ (Chinese and Korean women who were forced into prostitution for the Japanese soldiers on the front line), chemical and biological warfare, and the “Rape of Nanking in which over 300,000 Chinese were murdered and an estimated 20,000-80,000 women were raped in the course of the invasion.”[3] While the Japanese claimed to have atoned for their sins by pursuing the democratic and liberal economic model of development, China does not see this as sufficient apology, especially when former Japanese Prime Minister Koizimi visited the Yasukuni Shrine which is a shinto shrine in Tokyo dedicated to the memories of those lost serving Japan. Normally it should be no issue because it is a place to honor the spirits of people such as Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia; however, the difference of Arlington and Yasukuni is that names of 14 Class-A war criminals including former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo are inscribed at the shrine.[4] Japanese textbooks that whitewash the criminal nature of the occupation are other examples of contentious issues, and China will increasingly assert itself economically and geo-politically in matters that could potentially cause the People’s Republic to lose face.
China’s usurpation of the second most productive economy in the world from Japan signifies much in the way that Sino-Japanese relations will be conducted in the upcoming future. No longer will China have ‘little brother’ status diplomatically or financially. In fact, China proved one of the most stabilizing factors in East Asia during the financial crisis of ’97-’98 and the global financial crisis of ’08. With respect to its recent success, there has been a proposition by Suisheng Zhao of a Beijing Consenus, in evident to contrast to the Washington Consensus, which first coined in 1989 and contained 10 ‘rules’ in a one size fits all package for economic development in Latin America.[5] The apparent failure of the Washington Consensus after the failure of the Argentine and Brazilian economies in the late 1990s made many look to China as a model of liberal economic development with a political party that could retain a firm grip on government, the courts, the army, the internal security apparatus, and the free flow of information.[6] The past few years have indeed been telling about China’s desire to become an important player in the international arena; the real question is how China will integrate and what it will do to change the rules of the global system in its favor.
[1] Amako, Satoshi. ‘ The Senkaku Islands Incident and Japan-China Relations.’ East Asia Forum. 25 Oct 2010.
[2] Moore, Gregory. ‘History, Nationalism and Face in Sino-Japanese Relations.’ Journal of Chinese Political Science. 4 June 2010. Page 285
[3] Ibid. 2010:285
[4] ibid 2010:293
[5] Suisheng, Zhao. ‘The China Model: can it replace the Western Model of modernization?’ Journal of Contemporary China. June 2010. Page 420
[6] Rowan, Callick. ‘How long can economic freedom and political repression coexist?’ The American, The Journal of American Enterprise Institute. Nov/Dec 2007.
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