Pacific Perspectives Front Page, a publication of the Asia Pacific Media Network

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SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST/28 July 2005

CHINA NEEDS A MORE SILKEN TOUCH

BY TOM PLATE

Let’s play the blame game. Let’s bash the Japanese government for ratcheting up tension and looking to man-up. Bad, bad Japanese, right? Isn’t it just that simple?

You start by saying to Tokyo - what a talent you for making yourself into the bad guy!  Ever since May 3, 1947 your Japanese people have lived (and on the whole lived graciously and productively) under the embrace of an American-concocted constitution that with determination wrapped your defense forces up in restrictive Article 9. But look how well it worked out: Japan became one of the greatest economies - until very recently, the #1 economy in Asia!

But now Mr Shinzo Abe, working to realize his dream of dumping this iconic and ironic legacy of World War II in history’s dustbin, looks to be on the verge of … triumph! The current PM has his party and party allies just a legislative click or two away from expanding the leeway (and budget) of the armed forces (SDF) when they have a need to ‘defend Japan’, or help out allies or …  whatever.

Of course, Japan-bashers are quick with the mean-genes argument: Isn’t it telling that Abe’s mother was the daughter of Nobusuke Kishi, who prior to becoming the 37^th Japanese PM distinguished himself as a member of the Tojo Cabinet. No escaping those genes, eh?

Maybe, but here is what is far more interesting to me: that in his moment of political triumph, the PM’s move elicited such a tepid response from the Japanese people – seemingly far from gung-ho about pulling their samurai swords from the attic. One can imagine that having colossally lost a world war, which experience included a pair of atomic bombs atop two of their cities, leaving survivors and their children with a grim genetic legacy, might just take the fizz out of the champagne.

So how in the world did PM Abe carry the day against the admirably noble (and smartly pragmatic) pacifism of the Japanese people? What was the secret behind his mini-coup?  Someone must have stepped up big time to help him peddle the idea of military renewal to a populace that on the whole had been saying: No, we have been down that road before; never again. We are Japanese and we are too smart for that.

What in the world happened? Part of the answer is to be found in the government’s recent defense white paper, its message as obvious as the Great Wall of China. At its center is general obsession, and in the text are many particulars. There’s the well-documented Chinese naval buildup (well, this is a fact, right?), the potent policy influence of a possibly semi-sovereign Peoples Liberation Army (directly reflected in China President Xi Jinping urgent campaign to purge it and tame it), and China’s fast-and-furious land-reclamation and sandbar resurrection projects that Beijing says are more like open-to-all neighborhood recreational centers, but which most normal people say sure look like burgeoning military bases. Concludes Japan’s white paper: Beijing is “poised to fulfill its unilateral demands without compromise” by the blunt instrumentality of “coercive attempts to change the status quo.”

Quite a mouthful – but is it just snarky, Orwellian-style propaganda, hyped-up fodder for a major Japanese arms buildup? Or is it the plausible worry of a concerned government responsibly warning its people? If your inclination is to go Orwellian, fine: but then you have a problem. It’s that half of non-PRC Asia agrees with the idea that the challenge of China (without even mentioning the menace of North Korea) is no joke; and that most of the other half doesn’t know what to think but is nonetheless unnerved. (What’s left after that is a few countries quietly pocketing aid from Beijing and remaining dutifully silent.)

So whatever that man Shinzo is up to, he is not the only guy in Asia that’s got China on his mind. The Philippines, not exactly in the forefront of diplomatic pugnacity, has its bright lawyers at The Hague bringing island questions before the UN-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration. Other governments are siding with Manila. Arms-buying binges are in process. Governments are snapping up surveillance planes and naval equipment, as if to ensure no more lonely reefs or sand bars are sand-castled up overnight into landing strips without anyone knowing about it.

And then you have (and this one really got to me) the senior head of the Communist Party of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, obviously rattled and trying for all the world to seem sincere and contrite, showing up in the White House the other day looking for American love. Now, was that not something?

There you have it: the changing geopolitical landscape of Asia.

To be balanced and fair, in its actions in the East and South China seas, China does have plausible cases for much of what it does, along with the gut belief that it is its historical turn to take whatever it can before anyone stops them, which is exactly what some neighbors had been doing for decades before.

Perhaps so, but one thing is certain:  All these moves start to make the Japanese PM look less like a menace than a responsible leader. And who should get credit if that remarkable image transformation comes into full focus? I’m sorry but it does take two to tangle. In the last year or so China has presented to the world not the “peaceful rising” image but the “we’re rising and you’re not” image.

China’s new Asia-wide infrastructure investment program and its hope to take the lead in forging a modern Silk Road and all the rest might someday add up to a kind of Central Asian Marshall Plan. If so, this will be applauded by all and greatly honored by history. But in the meantime, Beijing might consider that it would be in its best national interest to treat its neighbors with a more tender touch. PM Abe could be made to look like a political moderate if China proceeds apace with its current course. Yes, China today has such power. But that’s not diplomacy. And it is not smart. Its diplomacy needs to be woven of much finer China silk.

Columnist Tom Plate, the author of “Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew,” is the Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies at Loyola Marymount University.