Fear and loathing in the wake of Hu's visit

As Jun Okumura notes, a poll by Fuji TV's Hodo 2001 program found that Fukuda Yasuo gained nothing from Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to Japan last week.

The poll recorded that nearly sixty percent of respondents disapprove of Mr. Fukuda's China policy.

Beyond public doubts, Mr. Fukuda's action (or inaction) during Mr. Hu's visit have driven conservative commentators into paroxysms of rage over Mr. Fukuda's supposed pusillanimity in the face of Chinese outrages, especially poisoned gyoza and human rights violations in Tibet.

In Shukan Shincho, Sakurai Yoshiko vented her spleen about the visit, arguing that Mr. Fukuda failed to defend Japan's national interests in his meetings with Mr. Hu.

She claims that Fukuda pere et fils have worked on behalf of China to the detriment of Japan, Takeo for consenting to a friendship treaty that "ignored national interests" and contributing to the expansion of the Chinese military by providing ODA, Yasuo for his failure to address the East China Sea dispute and for offering technological assistance on environmental grounds. To Ms. Sakurai, the Fukudas are traitors, "injuring Japan's national interests and betraying the people."

She also criticized Prime Minister Fukuda for calling the Tibet problem an internal problem, even as other world leaders have criticized China and threatened to stay away from the Beijing Olympics. (Of course, when foreign governments criticize Japan for one reason or another — take the comfort women issue, for example — that is a grave offense against Japan for commentators like Ms. Sakurai.) She also attacks Mr. Fukuda for opposing independence for Taiwan.

Komori Yoshihisa, Ms. Sakurai's ideological compatriot, also condemned Mr. Fukuda in the strongest possible terms at his blog. Examining the joint statement, he observes that the statement fails to include the words "democracy," "human rights," and "liberty," while using words like "cooperation," "peace," "mutual," and "friendship" numerous times. Mr. Komori attacks the Fukuda-Hu meetings on the basis of Mr. Fukuda's failure to defend the aforementioned universal values.

I have a particular problem with Ms. Sakurai's casual invocation of the phrase "national interest." She uses the phrase as if its meaning is commonly understood, self-evident to one and all. In no country is that the case. Ms. Sakurai has one vision of the national interest, one that views cordial relations with Japan's rapidly growing neighbor and largest trading partner as not in Japan's interest, and Mr. Fukuda has another, one that recognizes that Japan cannot afford to neglect China, even if pursuing a constructive relationship entails muting criticism of China's human rights record, among other things, and prioritizing process over substance. If there is a problem with Mr. Fukuda's approach is that he has failed to make the case for why Japan needs a constructive relationship and why it cannot adopt the conservative approach to China that entails little more than criticizing China for its failings. As I've noted before, the conservative vision of China policy is not a strategy. They offer no constructive, long-term ideas of how Japan can co-exist with a growing China. Their China policy is nothing but rage, rage that has become especially potent since their ideas get little reception at the center of power.

But because there are so few voices in the Japanese media capable of countering the arguments made by conservatives, their rage resonates, stoking public fears about a menacing China.

What choice does Japan have? Antagonizing China is a dead end for a depopulating, stagnant Japan whose regional and global influence is dwindling. The opposite of antagonism isn't surrender. It is prudent policy for Japan to construct a framework for Sino-Japanese relations within which the two countries can make steady progress on solving bilateral issues and ratchet down the hatreds and fears of the Japanese and Chinese peoples. Japan (and other developed countries) shouldn't totally ignore human rights issues, but, as William Schultz argues, they should be realistic about what pressuring China on human rights can actually achieve. In focusing on cooperative mechanisms and not mentioning the history issue — which, as Mainichi notes, did not go unnoticed by the Chinese people — Mr. Hu indicated that he acknowledges the value in a stable relationship. Mr. Fukuda clearly shares his vision. But can he convince the Japanese public of the wisdom in his approach?

Mr. Hu's relentlessly upbeat visit

Chinese President Hu Jintao will leave Japan Saturday after a five-day visit, a visit that the Chinese Communist Party's external relations bureau has described as a "great success."

(Photo from the Office of the Prime Minister)

It is hard to dispute that, as far as symbolism goes, the visit was indeed a success. Mr. Hu and Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo showed that the relationship is on an even keel, and Mr. Hu, by staying longer in Japan than in any other country (a meaningful statement considering his relentless globe trotting), showed Japan that China still finds value in a close relationship with its wealthier (for now) neighbor. The two leaders reaffirmed the "strategic, reciprocal relationship" approach to Sino-Japanese relations developed during Abe Shinzo's premiership.

In a joint statement, the two leaders agreed to a five-point program to enhance peaceful cooperation between Japan and China: (1) political confidence-building measures, including annual summits between heads of state and government, exchanges between parties and legislatures, and high-level visits and talks in the security realm; (2) cultural and personal exchanges; (3) reciprocal cooperation in the areas of energy and the environment, trade, finance, investment, and other economic sectors, continuation of the high-level economic dialog, and making the East China Sea a sea of "peace, cooperation, and friendship;" (4) cooperation in East Asia, including a commitment to the six-party process, with China welcoming normalization of Japanese-North Korea relations following resolution of "various problems," and the realization of an East Asian region grounded in openness, transparency, and inclusiveness; and (5) cooperation to resolve global problems and combat global warming, energy shortages, and infectious diseases (for China this latter effort starts at home).

As one might expect, there is little of substance in the joint agreement. MOFA has provided a list of concrete steps that will be taken in the coming months, but for the most part these are limited to scheduled summit meetings, visits, and exchanges. I'm certainly not complaining about that — the more interaction between the two governments and peoples, the better — but this week's summitry was more about "agreeing to pursue agreement" and establishing a new framework for Sino-Japanese relations than reaching substantive agreement on the real issues that haunt the bilateral agenda.

Reading the transcript of the joint press conference with Mr. Hu and Mr. Fukuda held on Wednesday, it is clear that both governments worked hard to keep the tone positive. The only reference to bilateral history was Mr. Hu's noting that "there are more than 2,000 years of history of friendly interaction between the peoples of Japan and China." The prevailing, tacit agreement in Sino-Japanese — and now, under President Lee Myung-bak, Japanese-South Korean — relations seems to be that all governments concerned will follow the Basil Fawlty line: "Don't mention the war." Unpleasantness over Tibet and poisoned gyoza was dispatched with ease in questioning; indeed, Mr. Hu, questioned about discussions with the Dalai Lama's representatives before the summit, drew a hard line, stating that it is now the responsibility of the Dalai Lama's "side" to forswear violence, separatist activities, and efforts to wreck the Olympics. The two leaders remained focused largely on enhanced political and economic times.

It is worth noting the difference in Japanese and Chinese visions. Mr. Fukuda spoke largely of the bilateral relationship; Mr. Hu spoke of the bilateral relationship, but embedded it in a regional and global context. In his remarks at the press conference, Mr. Hu spoke frequently of mechanisms for bilateral and regional cooperations. Wannabe dragon slayers may think that talk by Chinese officials about multilateral cooperation is a ploy to disarm potential enemies, but I think that may be overly cynical. China clearly recognizes the value of regional institutions, even with Japanese involvement (that might dilute China's power within said institutions). Judging by this summit, there is an appreciation in Beijing that it is better to placate Japan and have it play a constructive role in the region than to have an embittered Japan drawn to fantasies of containing China. The China on display at the joint press conference was a confident regional leader dedicated to creating a new East Asian order — hence there was no mention of the US (or Taiwan) by either leader.

There is nothing the US can or should do about this: Japan needs stable, cordial relations with both the US and China. Indeed, perhaps the more Japan undertakes initiatives outside the US-Japan alliance, the healthier the alliance will become, as Japan will feel less obligated to do Washington's bidding for lack of other options.

The question now is whether this approach is sustainable within Japan. For months now, the LDP's ideological conservatives and their allies in the media have been hammering Mr. Fukuda for being soft on China, especially in regard to Tibet and the poisoned gyoza issue. The "True Conservative Policy Research Group," the seat of the conservative ideologues within the LDP, has been particularly relentless in its criticism of Mr. Fukuda.

In a Mainichi article reviewing the group's opposition to Mr. Fukuda's China policy, one member is quoted as saying, "China policy will be one important theme in the next party president election. If Mr. Aso enters the presidential election, most of the members will shift their support to him." This last line is not particularly surprising — I've assumed from the beginning that Nakagawa Shoichi's study group is at least in part a committee to elect Aso Taro — but this article as a whole shows that the conservative approach to China remains bankrupt. The conservatives still have nothing constructive to offer. They would still rather harangue China for its failings than outline a way forward.

While Mr. Abe's overtures to China suggest that a conservative prime minister can still pursue a positive relationship with China, I fear that an Aso government — particularly an Aso government accompanied by a McCain administration calling for a League of Nations Democracies — would be considerably less forward-looking in its China policy. Mr. Aso might not necessarily return Sino-Japanese relations to the Koizumi-era deep freeze, although a glance at this speech he gave in 2006 on Yasukuni, in which he fails to mention the enshrined Class-A war criminals, suggests that Mr. Aso might have a devastating impact on the latest Sino-Japanese rapprochement; Mr. Aso and his comrades will most likely not embrace the Fawlty line. With Mr. Fukuda enfeebled and Mr. Aso positioning himself to take the premiership, there may yet be bumps ahead, sooner rather than later.

That said, I suspect that over the long term, the ability of China hawks in both Japan and the US to freeze or rollback cooperative ventures with China will be limited, provided that Beijing continues to talk about cooperative mechanisms and regional order. The challenge is making it to the long term with the least amount of backsliding due to agitation by conservatives.

UPDATE: Perhaps as part of the ongoing process of reinventing himself, Mr. Aso praised the talks as being effective on the tainted gyoza problem.

Bush talks sense on China

This week is the 2007 APEC summit in Sydney, and in advance of the week-long summitry, President Bush has been talking Asia — and saying the right things.

In a round table discussion with foreign journalists (hat tip: The Swamp), Mr. Bush spoke of the "complex relationship" between the US and China, but also noted, "...I view China as a positive opportunity." He did not hesitate to mention the economic friction or US concerns about human rights, but the overall picture suggests that as the Bush administration wanes, it increasingly recognizes the importance of China as a partner in the Asia-Pacific region, the single most important bilateral relationship in the region, judging by the time spent talking about it in this press conference. The days of Ambassador Mansfield's bar-none ranch are long gone.

Compare the above interview with an interview Mr. Bush had with NHK's Okushi Kensuke. The NHK interview focused on a couple of bilateral issues — the anti-terror special measures law and the six-party talks — before turning to US policy in Iraq. Both of the above-mentioned issues are trust issues: Washington's (overblown) concerns about the reliability of Japan's commitment to participate in Afghanistan, Tokyo's concerns about being abandoned in the six-party talks (and regarding Afghanistan, fears that the US security guarantee will weaken if Japan doesn't demonstrate its loyalty by contributing to US-led campaigns). The Sino-US relationship, for all the friction and feuding, is a relationship whose concerns are regional and global in scale. The US-Japan relationship, for all its significance for both countries, often amounts to the US doing heavy lifting for Japan on various security issues and occasionally cajoling Japan on trade and monetary issues.

When Mr. Bush meets with Hu Jintao, the agreements reached and decisions made have the potential to be hugely significant for the region, but can one say the same about the outcomes of the meeting between President Bush meets Prime Minister Abe this week?

This isn't to say that the US-Japan relationship is irrelevant or that the US and China are prepared to run the region in a sort of bilateral concert, but it does suggest that the US is increasingly seeing Asia policy through the prism of China policy (as opposed to seeing it through the prism of Japan policy), and that the value of a bilateral relationship to the US will increasingly be the value it has in contributing to "stability" (read a positive and mutually beneficial relationship with China).

Putin meets Hu

I feel like the title of this post could be the beginning of a corny geopolitics-themed Abbot and Costello parody.

But seriously, the Japanese media seems to be keeping a close eye on the meeting in Moscow between Presidents Hu and Putin. This Mainichi article, for example, calls attention to the two countries agreeing to strengthen their "strategic partnership. Yomiuri, meanwhile, ran two articles about the China-Russia summit, this one on the facts of the meeting and a longer, analytic article that does not appear to be online.

While it is entirely appropriate for the Japanese press to watch discussions between two of the four powers constituting the East Asian strategic quadrangle -- the subject of this book by Robyn Lim -- I suspect Japan's media, particularly conservative publications like Yomiuri, are interested in part because closer relations between China and Russia plays into the "antagonistic Asia" storyline. Two large continental empires with illiberal political system versus...the maritime democratic allies, standing shoulder to shoulder as they did during the cold war, except this time Japan would no doubt love to play a more active military role.

I think, however, that observers should not overestimate the value of the China-Russia partnership. While there are a number of areas in which Beijing and Moscow have reasons to cooperate -- perhaps starting from their joint defense of the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of states -- neither state, but Russia in particular, will benefit from being tied too closely to the other. And let's not forget that there is plenty of friction between the two, not least the millions of Chinese flowing into Siberia. Frankly, the less fettered Russia's position in the region, the better. Following up last month's visits to Japan by several Russian officials to talk energy, I would not be surprised if momentum builds towards a Japan-Russia rapprochement. The more Russia can triangulate between energy-hungry China and Japan, the more it will gain and the more secure its position in the Far East will be.

So while Russia and China may find international cooperation useful in, for example, the UN Security Council, I have doubts about whether Beijing and Moscow will be especially chummy in East Asian matters. The regional security environment is becoming increasingly fluid, militating against a firmer Sino-Russian partnership, and, I fear, more intense political cooperation between the US and Japan.