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Signs of a new detente

— Photo: Xinhua

Hu Jintao and Yasuo Fukuda (right)… new signs of potential friendliness.

It has been fashionable among some small countries of South-East Asia to say that ants may get crushed when elephants fight. The concern of these countries is that they should be able to position themselves in such a manner as to avoid getting affected by the China-India equation at any given time. It is, however, somewhat strange that the ‘powerful’ West now feels concerned about the new signs of potential friendliness between China and Japan, two major neighb ours in East Asia.

There has been no chorus of protest or concern by the big western governments themselves over the June 18 statement on “the principled consensus reached between China and Japan on the East China Sea Issue.” Yet, highly informed opinions have been expressed in the West, casting aspersions on a sudden and so-called “geographical discovery” by China and Japan.

The point at stake is the growing belief in China and Japan that their shared but disputed maritime zone, the East China Sea, can be turned into “a sea of peace, cooperation, and friendship.” Missed in the western sarcasm, though, are the new political cross-currents of potentially historic proportions in a geopolitical zone that the United States does not want to leave.

At the same time, it is this aspect of U.S. ‘interests’ that sparks an unduly critical western view on any signs of a possible rapprochement between China and Japan. After all, Official Japan remains a firm military ally of the U.S., despite a groundswell of opposition among the Japanese people to the utter insensitivity of the ordinary American soldier on their soil.

In this perspective, that is somewhat alarming to the West, or more precisely its influential opinion-makers, are the slightest signs of Japan’s willingness to accept the rapid rise of China as a full-fledged global power. It is, of course, common knowledge in this context that the U.S. and China themselves are at present seeking a constructive and cooperative equation. Nonetheless, Japan is certainly not the U.S. in the pervasive world view across the West.

The latest “principled consensus” between China and Japan has, therefore, produced a strong wave, not just a ripple effect, of concern in the West. Central to this potentially different political discourse is the context, rather than the finer print, of the consensus, which is expected to be firmed up into an “agreement” in due course.

In essence, the consensus provides for the “joint development,” through exploration and exploitation, of a clearly identified block in the Chunxiao (Shirakaba, in Japanese) gas-and-oil field in the East China Sea. The initiative has been made possible by “serious consultations” by both sides on “an equal footing”; and the pervasive “spirit” is one of “shelving differences and seeking common ground.”

The other salient aspects of the June 18 consensus underscore the “transitional” nature of the newly-agreed arrangement. As for a final settlement of the China-Japan maritime boundary along the East China Sea, Beijing has now reaffirmed its rejection of Tokyo’s proposal that a mutually acceptable “median line” be drawn and treated as the border line. On the other side, Japan is not agreeable to what it sees as China’s intransigence in insisting that the continental shelf of the Asian mainland should be the marker. If so, the Okinawa Trough very near Japan’s coastline would separate the exclusive economic zones of the two countries along the East China Sea.

For now, the consensus has been fashioned “without prejudicing” the respective “legal positions” of China and Japan on a final maritime boundary. This sets aside the question whether or not the block now chosen falls entirely within China’s sovereign jurisdiction. As a result, Tokyo has accepted Beijing’s proposal that “Japanese legal person,” meaning a company, participate in the “joint development” of the oil-and-gas block “in accordance with Chinese laws.” With the sovereignty issue “shelved” for now, the two sides have been able to ride out the recent wave of bilateral tensions. Unsurprisingly, therefore, Beijing and Tokyo have even thought of the previously unthinkable: a port call in China by a Japanese naval vessel.

The larger political context, therefore, acquires a greater meaning. Chinese President Hu Jintao and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda issued a powerful statement, after their talks in Tokyo on May 7, outlining the contours of a “mutually beneficial relationship based on common strategic interests.” In a geostrategic sense, the Joint Statement reflected the equivalent of China’s response to the move by the U.S. a few years ago to pull the Japanese into a firmer embrace than at any time earlier.

On that earlier occasion, the U.S. and Japan blueprinted the scope of a new bilateral relationship that would be based, for the first time, on efforts to bring about inter-operability in the already strong ties between their military forces. The U.S.-Japan agreement at that point in time was replete with a series of steps aimed at ‘right-sizing’ the American military profile in Okinawa and other Japanese centres. But, the accent on their intentions and on a related roadmap for efforts towards their military-to-military inter-operability was a new signal to the Asia-Pacific region. Above all, the U.S. and Japan had, prior to that accord, agreed to coordinate their “strategies” with regard to the Taiwan issue, prompting China to protest.

Against this background, the Hu-Fukuda Joint Statement of May 7 presages the potentiality of a new detente between China and Japan. Such a detente ipso facto is not antithetical to the long-term interests of the U.S., which is keen to avoid a military showdown with China. From a conventional western standpoint, though, the May 7 statement shows Japan as a player able and willing to come out of the shadow of the U.S. and deal with China quite autonomously of Washington.

In this strategic landscape, the new dynamics that led to the May 7 statement, which is the driving force behind the June 18 Consensus, are best narrated in the words of the protagonists themselves. On May 7, Mr. Hu was categorical in sensing that the China-Japan relationship had now reached “a new starting point” in a “historical” setting. Mr. Fukuda shared this view about some signs of a new detente. And they declared in their statement that “the two countries’ sole option is to cooperate to enhance peace and friendship over the long term.” More important, they emphasised that “the two sides... are partners who cooperate together and are not threats to each other.”

The political punch-line was much more of a new signal to the West. Without jettisoning the tangled Japan-China history as a factor that should be addressed sensitively, Mr. Hu and Mr. Fukuda maintained that from now on the two countries would “support each other’s peaceful development” in pragmatic ways. Post-imperial Japan often points to its ‘positive’ contribution to the economic dynamism of the People’s Republic of China.

Significantly new in the present circumstances is the way in which Mr. Hu has voiced China’s “positive evaluation” of Japan. He acknowledged “Japan’s consistent pursuit of the path of a peaceful country and Japan’s contribution to the peace and stability of the world through peaceful means over more than 60 years since World War II.”

These semantics are substantive. The Hu-Fukuda Statement is not a pointer to a Japanese future without the U.S.; but it will be foolish to dismiss the new buzz in Beijing’s ties with Tokyo as the result solely of China’s charm offensive on the eve of Olympics 2008.

Authoritative Chinese sources have told this correspondent that the litmus test of Japan’s re-emergence as a global power would be its willingness to give up its expansive Bismarck-style notions of greatness. And, the sources have often contrasted Japan with India, whose historical presence in East Asia has been defined by the benign spread of Buddhism. In a present-day perspective, Su Hao of the China Foreign Affairs University has said that economic ties “bind” China and Japan in a way that might help their “rapprochement... move forward.”

At the other end of the spectrum, authoritative Japanese sources are convinced that “the world is going to be worse off” if Japan and China see each other as “a threat” instead of seizing their “sole option” of supporting the “peaceful rise” of both sides at this time.

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