• Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

    NEWS HUNT EXPRESS

    Allways With You

    Little cheer as Japan, China mark 50 years of ties

    Bynewshuntexpress

    Sep 26, 2022



    TOKYO: Japan and China will mark 50 years of diplomatic relations this month with little public celebration, as increasing friction over territorial rivalries and military spending frays ties.

    The world’s second- and third-largest economies are key trading partners and just a few years ago seemed poised for a diplomatic blossoming, with plans for a state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

    But since then, ties have soured significantly as Beijing bolsters its military, projects power regionally and beyond, and takes a harder line on disputed territory.

    In recent months, Chinese missiles are believed to have fallen within Japan’s exclusive economic zone, and Tokyo has protested what it calls growing aerial and maritime violations.

    Japan also regularly complains about Chinese activity around the disputed, Tokyo-controlled Senkaku islands, which Beijing claims and calls the Diaoyus.

    Get the latest news


    delivered to your inbox

    Sign up for The Manila Times’ daily newsletters

    By signing up with an email address, I acknowledge that I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

    “Chinese ships are loitering for dozens of days in the East China Sea, while an artificial island and a base have already been built in the South China Sea,” said Kenichiro Sasae, head of the Japan Institute of International Affairs.

    “That makes us wonder: how much further will China’s ambition go in terms of naval power?” added Sasae, a former ambassador to Washington and vice minister of foreign affairs.

    The war in Ukraine has only deepened the divide, with Japan backing Western allies opposed to Russia’s invasion while Beijing avoids criticizing Moscow.

    And the conflict has refocused attention on whether China might try to forcibly reunite Taiwan with the mainland, prompting Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to warn that the war in Ukraine “could be East Asia tomorrow.”

    ‘Anxious about China’

    Beijing and Tokyo normalized relations in a joint communique on Sept. 29, 1972, that officially ended their state of war and saw Japan drop its recognition of Taiwan.

    Economic ties grew quickly and steadily, but political relations have been more unstable, weathering a series of crises, including over the disputed Senkaku-Diaoyu islands.

    Beijing’s growing power has left Japan “anxious about China,” said Rumi Aoyama, director of the Waseda Institute of Contemporary Chinese Studies.

    “Japan sees China’s activities in the Senkaku islands as problematic and involving a ‘core interest,'” Aoyama told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

    “But the problem is, China doesn’t understand this Japanese perspective. Instead, it tends to see Japan as just following whatever the US says,” she said.

    Tokyo is a longstanding and key United States ally, but it has been expanding its partnerships as a bulwark against Beijing.

    It backed a revived “Quad” alliance with Australia, India and the US, and Kishida in June became Japan’s first leader to attend a North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit.

    “China is gaining power and confidence. That’s a trend that can’t be ignored,” said Ken Endo, a security expert and international politics professor at the University of Tokyo.

    Japan must “consistently state internationally” that changing the status quo by force, whether in Ukraine or Taiwan, is unacceptable, he said.

    Tokyo needs a more robust defense capacity — something Kishida and his ruling party have already publicly backed — to show that “it’ll cost a lot if you invade us,” Endo added.

    Trading partners

    Japan is reportedly weighing boosting defense spending up to 2 percent of gross domestic product within five years, from the current 1 percent.

    That would represent a sea change in Japan, whose pacifist constitution still limits its military capacity, but a modest increase compared to decades of additional spending by Beijing.

    It could also carry its own dangers, stoking regional tensions, if communication with China is not handled carefully, Sasae said.

    “Every country has contingency plans, including China, but Japan should make clear that it does not want military confrontation,” he said.

    Japan’s brutal occupation of parts of China before and during World War 2 remains a sore point, with Beijing accusing Tokyo of failing to atone for its past.

    Visits by Japanese officials to the Yasukuni shrine that honors war dead — including convicted war criminals — regularly prompt anger from Beijing.

    For all the tensions, the two countries remain economically intertwined: China is Japan’s largest trading partner, and Japan is China’s second-largest after the US.

    And reports suggest Tokyo could be seeking Xi-Kishida talks in the coming months, online or in person.

    Business ties are “a decisive factor in stopping a free fall of the relationship,” said Aurelio Insisa, a history professor at the University of Hong Kong and author of a book on Chinese-Japanese ties.

    But they may not be sufficient to thaw ties.

    “Beijing’s behavior in its neighborhood, and Tokyo’s perceptions of it, are the two main factors capable of changing the current dynamic,” Insisa said. “I would not bet on any improvement on these two fronts.”

    .



    Source link

    Leave a Reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *