Chinese leaders orchestrate anti-Japanese protests over islands

There is a prospect of worsening relations between China and Japan as both governments move to control and direct nationalist antagonisms over the disputed ownership of a group of islands.

The moves are most evident in China where authorities took firm control, but also encouraged anti-Japanese protests by tens of thousands of people in 85 cities (hint: no Tiananmen Square massacre this time) during the past few days.

The situation in China has added intrigue because of evidence that factions in the contest for leadership positions in the ruling Communist party and government to be announced in the next few months are using swelling anti-Japanese nationalism to their own advantage.

There is speculation among well-placed Chinese commentators that designated incoming party leader and president Xi Jinping, who is seen as being close to the military, is trying to prevent the man he is set to replace, Hu Jintao, from keeping control of the powerful Communist party Military Commission.

The Chinese protests were set off by the Japanese government of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, which a few days ago “nationalized” the uninhabited islands by buying them from their private owner.

The purchase was an attempt by the Japanese government to head off a campaign by the ultranationalist governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, for his municipality to buy the islands, known as the Senkakus in Japan and, since 1970, the Diaoyutai in China.

There are broader implications prompting the two governments to take control of the issue, which until now has generated intense emotional commitment among only a tiny minorities of nationalists in China and Japan, and also in Taiwan.

China’s regional political and military muscle, which have grown alongside its economic blossoming, have rekindled old territorial disputes with several of its neighbours, as well as raising anxieties about Beijing’s desire to project power in the Far East and Southeast Asia.

For some time, prominent Chinese military men such as generals Liu Yazhou and Liu Yuan have been publicly critical of what they see as a supine attitude by the government of President Hu toward Japan over the Senkakus, and toward Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia over disputed islands in the South China Sea.

But this past weekend, some of the bellicose language of the generals was adopted for the first time by the Beijing government.

Far more threatening in tone was the vice-minister of foreign affairs, Le Yucheng, who in a speech talked of “sinister” developments in Japan.

He characterized the Noda government as weak and therefore giving in to ultra-right-wing nationalist forces in Japan.

Tension over the Senkakus is being “stirred up single-handedly” by the Noda government with the aim of “rewriting Japan’s inglorious history of illegally stealing Chinese territory,” Le said.

The Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea have been under Japanese control since 1895.

They did not become a bone of contention between Tokyo and Beijing until 1970 when a United Nations report produced evidence of submarine reserves of oil and natural gas in the region.

Since then, there have been increasingly frequent attempts by Chinese nationalists to land on the islands, and by Chinese fishermen to work in the waters around the islands.

The Japanese Coast Guard has usually intercepted the intruders, but on occasion there have been violent clashes.

In the last few days, China has heightened the prospects of more clashes and perhaps worse by sending maritime surveillance ships to the waters around the islands.

Since it came to power in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party has fostered strong anti-Japanese prejudice among its people by putting great emphasis in school and college teaching on the worst excesses of the Japanese military regime in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s.

The purposes of this is in part to divert attention from the even worse excesses of the Chinese Communist Party, especially during the rule of dynasty founder Mao Zedong, and to entrenched nationalist sympathies to be called on in time of need.

But generations of Beijing’s leaders have been acutely aware that nationalism and extreme patriotism are dangerous sentiments that can easily turn on those in power.

And, indeed, it has been noticeable in anti-Japanese demonstrations in recent years, including in those of the last few days, that some demonstrators accuse the Beijing government of failing to be strong enough in its dealings with Japan because of corruption or incompetence.

Partly for this reason the authorities both encourage and take control of the anti-Japanese demonstrations.

Protesters in Beijing over the weekend were herded into groups of 100.

Those without banners were given Chinese flags and were then guided to the Japanese embassy for five minutes of chanting before being replaced by the next group.

In the southern city of Shenzhen, the authorities used text messaging to get their instructions out to would-be demonstrators.

“In order to ensure your own and others’ safety and maintain normal social order, everyone please express their patriotic fervour rationally, and abstain from illegal or criminal behaviour,” said the message.

Jonathan Manthorpe

China’s Made-in-America Success Story

NEW DELHI – America’s strategy in Asia for more than a century has sought a stable balance of power to prevent the rise of any hegemon. Yet the United States, according to its official National Security Strategy, is also committed to accommodating “the emergence of a China that is peaceful and prosperous and that cooperates with us to address common challenges and mutual interests.” So America’s Asia policy has in some ways been at war with itself.

In fact, the US has played a key role in China’s rise. For example, rather than sustain trade sanctions against China after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, the US decided instead to integrate the country into global institutions. But US foreign policy had been notable for a China-friendly approach long before that.

In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt, who hosted the peace conference in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, after the Russo-Japanese War, argued for the return of Manchuria to Manchu-ruled China and for a balance of power in East Asia. The war ended up making the US an active participant in China’s affairs.

After the Communists seized power in China in 1949, the US openly viewed Chinese Communism as benign, and thus distinct from Soviet Communism. And it was after the Communists crushed the pro-democracy movement in 1989 that the US helped to turn China into an export juggernaut that has accumulated massive trade surpluses and become the principal source of capital flows to the US.

America’s policy toward Communist China has traversed three stages. In the first phase, America courted Mao Zedong’s regime, despite the Korean War, China's annexation of Tibet, and domestic witch hunts, such as the Hundred Flowers Campaign. Courtship gave way to estrangement during the second phase, as US policy for much of the 1960’s sought to isolate China.

The third phase began immediately after the 1969 Sino-Soviet military clashes, with the US actively seeking to exploit the rift in the Communist world by aligning China with its anti-Soviet strategy. Although China clearly instigated the bloody border clashes, America sided with Mao’s regime. That helped to lay the groundwork for the China “opening” of 1970-1971, engineered by US National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, who until then had no knowledge of the country.

Since then, the US has pursued a conscious policy of aiding China’s rise. Indeed, President Jimmy Carter sent a memo to various US government departments instructing them to help in China’s rise – an approach that remains in effect today, even as America seeks to hedge against the risk that Chinese power gives rise to arrogance. Indeed, even China’s firing of missiles into the Taiwan Strait in 1996 did not change US policy. If anything, the US has been gradually loosening its close links with Taiwan, with no US cabinet member visiting the island since those missile maneuvers.

Seen in this light, China’s spectacular economic success – including the world’s largest trade surplus and foreign-currency reserves – owes much to US policy from the 1970’s on. Without the significant expansion in US-Chinese trade and financial relations, China’s growth would have been much slower and more difficult to sustain.

Allies of convenience during the second half of the Cold War, the US and China emerged from it as partners tied by interdependence. America depends on China’s trade surplus and savings to finance its outsize budget deficits, while China relies on its huge exports to the US to sustain its economic growth and finance its military modernization. By plowing more than two-thirds of its mammoth foreign-currency reserves into US dollar-denominated assets, China has gained significant political leverage.

China is thus very different from previous US adversaries. America’s interests are now so closely intertwined with China that a policy to isolate or confront it is not feasible. Even on the issue of democracy, the US prefers to lecture other dictatorships rather than the world’s largest autocracy.

Yet it is also true that the US is uneasy about China’s not-too-hidden aim to dominate Asia – an objective that runs counter to US security and commercial interests and to the larger goal of securing a balance in power in Asia. To avert Chinese dominance, the US has already started to build countervailing influences and partnerships, without making any attempt to contain China.

For the US, China’s growing power actually helps to validate its forward military deployments in Asia, maintain existing allies in the region, and win new strategic partners. Indeed, an increasingly assertive China has proven a diplomatic boon for the US in strengthening and expanding its Asian security relationships.

The lesson is clear: The muscle-flexing rise of a world power can strengthen the strategic relevance and role of a power in relative decline. Barely a decade ago, the US was beginning to feel marginalized in Asia, owing to several developments, including China’s “charm offensive.” But now America has returned firmly to center stage. South Korea has beefed up its military alliance with the US; Japan has backed away from an effort to persuade the US to move its Marine base out of Okinawa; Singapore has allowed the US Navy to station ships; Australia is hosting US Marine and other deployments; and India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines, among others, have drawn closer to the US as well.

But no one should have any illusions about US policy. Despite America’s “pivot” to Asia, it intends to stick to its two-pronged approach: seek to maintain a balance of power with the help of strategic allies and partners, while continuing to accommodate a rising China.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, is the author of Asian Juggernaut and Water: Asia’s New Battleground.