The Year That Was in Asia Pacific

Jacob Kovalio (Professor, Carleton University, Ottawa)

A - Northeast Asian tour d'horizon

1) Japan's annus horribilis

In Asia Pacific, the early 21st century is a time of competition for pre-eminence (leadership is an inappropriate term in an environment of fully independent nations and growing regionalism) between Japan and China, a natural development. As before, so in 2005, Japan's approach has been subtle, employing economic means and expecting to be pushed to the political forefront by others. China, however, whether trying to woo smaller nations into its orbit with Mulin/Anlin/Fulin [Friendship/Security/Prosperity] incentives, but particularly in attempting to eclipse Japan, has displayed the finesse of an elephant in a china (no pun intended) shop.

China's intensifying political assertiveness, as a corollary to its spectacular economic growth, should have been expected, both because this is normal human behavior (despite the shrill propaganda about Asian 'reticence') but particularly because of the Middle Kingdom's millenary tradition of political aloofness and cultural supremacism. A minor display of that custom was at the recent East Asia Summit where China was the only nation not represented by its top political leader.

The biggest political story of the year in Asia Pacific was the Sino-Korean anti-Japanese propaganda offensive, a textbook case of history being (ab)used both as foreign policy weapon and domestic politics tool. 2005 was the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World (Pacific) War, and the 40th anniversary of normalization of Japan-ROK relations, designated the Year of Korean-Japanese Friendship. It was also the year Japan's drive to become a permanent member of the Security Council of the United Nations reached its peak. However, the present administrations in Beijing and Seoul decided to thwart Japan's candidacy using history as pretext and instrument.

Territorial disputes also played a role in exacerbating Japan's relations with Korea and China. South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun on his website literally declared diplomatic war on Japan in reaction to statements of jurisdiction by Tokyo and Shimane prefecture, over the tiny islet Koreans know as Dokdo and Japanese as Takeshima, in the Sea of Japan which Koreans call the East Sea. Since South Korean military forces have been in firm control of the islet for over fifty years, a more subdued response from Mr. Roh may have been more appropriate. In the East China Sea, the tiny but oil and gas rich archipelago Japan calls Senkaku and China Diaoyu is in dispute. China, while agreeing in principle to negotiations has been extracting oil and gas in the area under the protection of its warships. Japan is in the process of doing the same.

The case China and Korea have been making against Japan's candidacy for permanent membership on the Security Council of the UN includes three related accusations: that Japan has not repented sincerely for its imperialist continental policies until 1945; that Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro insults them when praying at Yasukuni Shrine, the national military pantheon, where the remains of some of the country's wartime leaders who were tried and executed by the Allies - including China - in 1948, are buried; and that history textbooks are used in Japan which minimize its aggressive policies until 1945.

Japan's continental expansionism over the fifty years ending in 1945 - and reaching its most violent stage after 1931, under the pretense of freeing fellow Asians from Western colonialism - is documented and largely beyond dispute, even among most Japanese. However, it is the present economic and military capabilities of China and South Korea and no less importantly, Japan's genuine postwar pacifism and substantive contribution to the development of its two southwestern neighbours and Asia Pacific at large, that attest to a dramatically different environment. Southeast Asia, whose peoples were also under Japanese occupation during the Pacific War have not actively participated in the present Sino-Korean political offensive against Japan.

Over the years, on at least twenty occasions, Japanese dignitaries - emperors, most prime ministers and others - have apologized to their Asian neighbours, individually or collectively, for wartime atrocities. But it is in the form of its genuinely constructive postwar policies that Japan's transformation, which has benefited itself as well as the region is evident. This fact lends credibility to Mr. Koizumi's response to his critics that he visits Yasukuni Shrine to pray for peace. In the past sixty years Chinese (as well as Cambodians, Nepalese, Peruvians, Africans and others) were tormented by Mao Zedong (or his ideas) and Koreans by Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il and Yi Sung-man. Therefore, when considering its very constructive postwar record, Japan deserves a permanent seat on the Security Council as much as China. For China and Korea, the 60th anniversary of Japan's defeat should have been a year of thankfulness to their liberators - the United States-led Allies - sober remembrance of a dark past mixed with justified pride in their postwar achievements, as well as an occasion to strengthen their friendship with Japan over recent decades, and not one for government-sponsored, "spontaneous," anti-Japanese demonstrations. The suffering of their peoples until 1945 should be a constant reminder to China and Korea of the need to maintain internal stability and national strength and not an instrument of perpetual hate against a pacifist Japan. After all, China's positive present relations with Vietnam and South Korea for instance, are based on the latter two pretending to forget having been targets of recent and historical Chinese aggression.

In Japan textbooks are chosen by each school individually, from a list approved by education authorities. The list always includes tomes whitewashing its pre-1945 expansionism, reflecting the influence of ultranationalistic elements but also the fact that in Japan freedom of expression is absolute. Recent Korean data show that only 0.4 % of Japanese schools use inappropriate books. In contrast to Japan, history education is strictly regulated and ultra-nationalistic in both China and South Korea, not to even mention North Korea. The People's Republic of China has a special segment in its history program titled Patriotic Anti-Japanese Education. The still democratizing Republic of Korea has a government-controlled, ultra-nationalistic, anti-Japanese history curriculum. Until two years ago, Japanese radio and television broadcasts were barred from South Korea. Furthermore, the leftist nationalists who dominate South Korea's universities and so-called civil rights and progressive groups have created an environment in which even the Korean War is (mis)represented as a war of national liberation from colonial rule and against a puppet regime supported by Western imperialism!

The recklessness of the Sino-Korean (ab)use of history for political aims in 2005, becomes most evident when realizing that in May, a modern and contemporary history textbook, based on tri-national interpretative consensus, jointly written over the previous two years by historians from the three nations and titled History for a Bright Future was concomitantly published in the three languages. It is also worth mentioning, that cultural relations at the popular level, among Japanese, Koreans and Chinese are thriving. Lately, Japan and China, like the rest of Asia Pacific, are in the grip of a Hallyu "wave" of Korean popular culture.

The Hu Jintao administration faces daunting domestic problems. The dizzying pace of China's recent economic growth has been accompanied by familiar social disruptions and rampant corruption which threaten the stability of the regime. The People's Daily, government research centers and other sources have warned the leadership of the potentially explosive political dangers of the widening economic gaps. In late October, following official reports on 70,000 incidents of social disruption, poverty and social unrest were declared top priority on the national agenda for the next Five Year Plan. Therefore, it is convenient for Beijing to divert the anger of millions of its citizens who have not benefited from its burgeoning economy, to the Japanese aggression which ended sixty years ago, and away from the regime's present failures, or the dreadful memories of Mao's reign. Recently, Chinese authorities are even insisting on the hanging of anti-Japanese banners in cinema waiting areas!

In South Korea, the administration of President Roh Moo-hyun has the support of less than 20% of the population. In 2005, the self-styled Participatory Government actually engaged in divisive policies, deliberately fanning anti-Japanese feelings for political goals. A Korean Issues Research Institute [Minjok Munje Yonguso] close to the President's URI party was charged with compiling by early 2006, a blacklist of families (said to include about 3000 names) whose members, most dead by now, are alleged to have collaborated with the Japanese until 1945. The ultimate goal of this exercise is to prevent Park Geyun-hye, the leader of the opposition Grand National Party and daughter of late president Park Chung-hee, who served in the Japanese military until 1945, from running for president in 2007. In late 2005, under the guise of reforming the executive along American lines, President Roh launched a campaign to amend the constitution so that he can run for re-election. The former human rights lawyer, who as President has engaged in anti-democratic practices like illegal surveillance of civilians, which he bitterly criticized before being elected, seems determined to do anything to cling to power.

2) Japanese reactions to China's "Peaceful Rise"

The present regime in Beijing, formally, is the political descendant of that of Mao Zedong who in November 1957, in Moscow, at celebrations for the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution was calling on the communist camp to launch a nuclear war against the capitalist world, for the defeat of which he was willing to sacrifice at least 200 million Chinese lives. Since then, however, under savvy political leadership beginning with Deng Xiaoping, and taking advantage of its location, size and enormous and hardworking population, as well as thanks to rapid technological progress and global economic capitalism - both originating in the West and Japan - China has become a major economic and potentially, political, power. In today's Asia, China (and India) because of their gargantuan size, much more so than South Korea and Taiwan (or even Japan) which preceded them and showed the way, are vibrant examples of the fundamental superiority of capitalism (myriad warts notwithstanding) as an economic system. This, despite Beijing's preference for the politically clever designation of "socialist market economy" for its system, whose top toiling stars purchased forty Rolls Royce cars in 2005. The growing move of production lines by companies from all over the world to China reminds one of Lenin's remark that the capitalists will sell the communists even the rope with which the latter will hang them. Giving Lenin's metaphor a more benign and authentic interpretation, a future scenario in which China's human and cultural assets and the obsessive Western/Japanese capitalist pursuit of profit, will have resulted in global Chinese economic and political hegemony should not be considered an entirely farfetched proposition, particularly if strong present trends toward regionalism (see East Asia summit below) fail. At this point, there is no doubt that the Chinese emulation of the early South Korean and Taiwanese models - political totalitarianism cum economic capitalism - has been a runaway success, preventing the People's Republic of China from meeting the fate of the Soviet Union which attempted concomitant economic and political reform. Therefore, the main challenge confronting the nominally communist (but traditionally totalitarian and increasingly nationalistic) Beijing regime is domestic - that of compatibility between its one-party political system and socio-economic capitalism, i.e., its capability, unlike Seoul and Taipei, to avoid political democratization. Given China's size and more pivotal position, its answer to this question, positive or negative, will have dramatic internal and possibly even external repercussions.

In the 21st century, China's economic, political and military presence, regionally and globally are bound to increase. Thus it will have to alleviate understandable concerns, first in Asia Pacific. Only the future will show if the slogan Peaceful Rise [Heping Juechi] had a constructive meaning or otherwise. Sensitive to its international image, recently Beijing has curtailed the use of that slogan, because of its occasional aggressive perception by others, preferring the more benign sounding Peaceful Development [Heping Fanjian] instead. In immediate retrospect, China's 2005 anti-Japanese propaganda offensive may turn out to be a tactical misstep, since Japan's reactions indicate that it considers the attacks as a serious national threat. At the end of 2005, for the first time ever, both Prime Minister Koizumi's governing Liberal Democratic Party, fresh from a landslide electoral victory facilitated in part by Beijing's provocations, and the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan under new leader Maehara Seiji, declared China a serious security threat to Japan. The publication of China's first white paper on defense in December 2005, notwithstanding, Foreign Minister Aso Taro was expressing Japan's displeasure both with the rapid growth in Beijing's military expenditure and its lack of transparency on security affairs. The consequences of that Japanese evaluation have been manifold. Tokyo has reacted to Beijing's belligerence (and North Korea's potential nuclear threat) by strengthening its alliance with Washington, politically, strategically and militarily. Overall bilateral relations have never been more cordial. The US is supporting Japan's UNSC aspirations, and a token Japanese military unit is engaged in humanitarian work in Samawa, Iraq. Even more importantly, joint naval exercises in the Senkaku area are scheduled for 2006. Japan has announced the development of a short-range torpedo to fit the close combat environment in the area. Washington and Tokyo are full partners on nuclear missile defense. Japan, uncharacteristically bluntly, has called for an increase in China's UN dues to reflect its economic growth, accused Beijing of being a major environmental polluter and expanded ties with Taiwan. Other relevant developments in Japan - not triggered by the crisis with China/Korea - have included: the elevation of the administrative status of the defense agency to that of a full ministry; progress toward the amendment of the pacifist Article 9 of the Constitution giving legal status to the military; beefing up of its human and satellite intelligence capacity; expanding its naval forces, testing an advanced supersonic engine in Australia and accelerating the development of its missile technology.

3) The Russian dimension

Russia supports Japan's Security Council bid but in all other respects seems to have "tilted" toward China. Moscow is a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization which China dominates and is Beijing's major supplier of arms and advanced weapon technology. In the vital energy area, in 2005, President Putin diverted the course of a major Siberian natural gas pipeline toward China, from its previous course which was advantageous to Japan. The Russian leader has refused to even discuss the issue of Northern Territories (Southern Kurile for Russia) with Japan since very high oil and gas prices have given his country new economic confidence in the immediate future, thus lessening the need for Japanese economic cooperation. Russia maintains its influence in Central Asia through the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) made up of Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Tajikistan and Armenia, which it dominates and to which it also supplies arms, to prove itself as a viable alternative to US presence.

4) Recent Chinese views of the United States

Traditionally, the US is perceived as preventing Beijing from achieving two major regional goals: unification with Taiwan, and domination of Asia Pacific. There has been a dramatic change in China's view of the US since November 1998 when then president Jiang Zemin was referring to a "strategic partnership" between his nation and the US. The recent People's Republic of China defense white paper identified the US as its main enemy. The reverse is also true, of course. Beijing's present calculation seems to be that, given the impact of Iraq as a growing military and domestic problem for the George W. Bush administration, America's ongoing economic woes, as well as its dependence on China's good services in the six-nation framework on North Korean nuclear brinkmanship, place it in an advantageous position. China will continue to host the meetings as well as make positive rhetorical statements without facilitating any substantive change. Broadly speaking, a constructive solution to the North Korean nuclear question would neutralize China's superior position at present and accelerate Korean unification, which may not be in its (or South Korea's) best immediate interests. If this analysis is correct, the six-nation negotiation process is but a futile exercise insofar as the US and Japan are concerned. The separate bilateral talks between Pyongyang and Washington and Tokyo, respectively, in late 2005, seem to point in that direction. Many Chinese analysts today tend to see US-PRC relations in negative terms. Li Dongxi, a political scientist at People's University in Beijing recently in an online discussion group depicted US-China relations in colourful terms: "The US has its Blue Team - a group of politicians, aides and academics worried about the China threat ... we have our Red Team [anti-American nationalists in research outfits, the military and security people]. Shen Dingli an arms control expert at Fudan University in an online posting has stated: "The US has been painted as a threat to Asia Pacific security. We've never said it so bluntly before. I think China is preparing for a clash with the United States."

I consider particularly interesting, however, the analysis contained in an online piece titled "China's Cross-Straits Go Game" by Dr. Lin Chong-pin of Taiwan's Tamkang University. Dr. Lin describes China's grand strategy as a synergy of domestic, foreign, economic, military and Taiwan policies, all designed to ultimately dominate East Asia and eliminate US influence through economic and cultural, though not military, means. This, although Beijing is determined to equip itself with nuclear submarines capable of launching ICBMs against the US and of attacking American carriers as well as with what he calls an "acupuncture capability" against Taiwan. Overall, Lin refers to the military angle in China's policy as Beier Buyong [Available but Preferably Not to be Used] since its leadership thinks that time is on their side. Therefore, a proactive economic and cultural foreign policy will probably be employed to cultivate the EU - as well as Latin America and Africa - as counterweight to the US. Taiwan is to be lured, not bullied, into unification, if necessary even using the Ukraine and Belarus formula of the Soviet Union. My impression is that this creative exercise regarding Taiwan may not be needed at all. Recently, the future political viability of the de-facto independent and thriving island seems most doubtful, given the growing sentimental and political (in that order) rapprochement between its two major opposition parties, the KMT and the People First Party, and Beijing.

5) South Korea's Policy of Peace and Prosperity

The Roh administration's Policy of Peace and Prosperity toward North Korea is one of utter appeasement of the Pyongyang regime. This line includes support for North Korea's nuclear weapon capability, which Seoul, like Pyongyang, but unlike Washington and Tokyo, sees as defensive (against a potential US pre-emptive strike). Roh Moo-hyun has constantly expanded economic and other forms of aid to North Korea, which would have been worthy of praise had they benefited the suffering populace rather than the ruling dynasty and its military. Mr. Roh has insisted on punitive measures against former South Korean military rulers Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, but forbidden his ministers from criticizing Kim Jong-il's less than stellar human rights record. This includes Pyongyang's recent expulsion of foreign food aid organizations from the country although basic staples continue to be in short supply. President Roh, who came to power on an anti-American platform, seems determined to abrogate the security treaty with the United States, despite pro-forma constructive statements to placate internal opposition, and the presence of a South Korean contingent in Iraq. In 2005, the ROK regained full operational command over its forces both in peace and war time. In March in an appearance before the graduating class of the Korean Military Academy, Mr. Roh proposed the transformation of his nation into the security balancer of Northeast Asia, to replace the US-centered alliance system. The only nation which immediately supported the idea was China. President Roh's speech at the annual UN General Assembly in September 2005 was titled "Vigilance against the Resurgence of Major-Power Centrism is in Order." Using the ancient Confucian tactic of "playing off one barbarian against another" Mr. Roh praised the European Union, which he and China want to use as counterweight to the US.

6) A de-facto Pax Sinica-Koreana ?

The PRC leadership has repeatedly stated that China will "never be a hegemon, never practice power politics, and never pose a threat to its neighbors or to world peace." Knowing history, one would have expected the PRC, like most other nations achieving prominence, to do exactly the opposite, but not as early, albeit on a limited scale. One wonders if PRC behaviour in 2005, is evidence of the gun (the military) (over)ruling the Party. The world has fully engaged China the moment the historically aloof and (culturally) supremacist Middle Kingdom decided to engage the world. The engagement looks mutually beneficial at this point, although China seems to be gaining more, at least economically, than its eager trading partners. As mentioned earlier, China's future fate depends on the capacity of its rulers to maintain the balance between its totalitarian political tradition (continued under communism) and its burgeoning capitalist socio-economic present, which is non-Chinese in origin. The success of the last twenty-five years augurs well for Beijing. In the immediate future, China-centered Confucianism and the residue of the millenary tradition of Sadae Juui [Bowing to Chinese prominence] combined with anti-American and anti-Japanese inclinations constitute the common ideological foundation of the present administration in Seoul, and Beijing. It seems that for President Roh Moo-hyun democracy is not an end but a political tool to be used in the service of leftist ultra-nationalism. If recent trends continue, 2005 may become the starting point of a (temporary) de-facto Sino-Korean (Seoul/Pyongyang) front whose immediate goals are: revamping the strategic architecture in northeast Asia by marginalizing Japan as a major regional (and global) power; ending the US-ROK alliance; eliminating American involvement in the western Pacific, and replacing it with a Pax Sinica-Koreana. After President Roh Moo-hyun is gone and if his peculiar internal and external legacy is abandoned, as well as assuming that China's prominence will continue to grow, it is natural for a Japan- [unified] Korea-Russia-US rapprochement to emerge as a viable, interim, stage, before regionalism matures.

B - The East Asia Summit, a "Jihad for peace," and the NNN

The year ended with the first ever East Asia Summit (EAS) held in Kuala Lumpur in mid-December. The gathering included the ten ASEAN [Association of South East Asian Nations] nations (Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Brunei, Singapore, the Philippines), the three northeast Asian states (Japan, China and South Korea) as well as India, Australia and New Zealand. Russia became the newest ASEAN dialogue partner and its future chances of becoming a full member of the EAS are very good. The ongoing spat between Japan and China was evident there, too. Tokyo won some points when India, Australia and New Zealand were invited, and the agenda was not decided prior to the start of the summit, counter to Beijing's positions on both issues. ASEAN, the experienced forty-year old regional body for the time being will function as the centre of the evolving EAS, to be convened annually after the ASEAN leaders' gathering. In the more distant future, the EAS may become a body similar to the EU, with Japan, China, Indonesia, Russia (like Germany, Britain, France, Italy) as first among equals. The United States, an Asia-Pacific nation through Hawaii and Guam, may become a member at some point. Irrelevant though it may sound today, an Association of Asian Union (AAU) does already exist. Founded by a group of Indian diplomats in 2001, its president is Dr. Beni Prassad Agarwal, former Indian ambassador to Lebanon and Bulgaria. The AAU envisages an EU-like framework but fully continental in scope!

The EAS is an expanded version of the East Asia Economic Group (EAEG) proposed by former Malaysian prime minister Tun Dr. Mahathir bin-Mohamad in 1995. Two years after retirement, Mr. Mahathir continues to be highly influential in Kuala Lumpur, and as expected, in anti-Western, anti-American and antisemitic - thus three anti-ist - circles worldwide. The Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute (ASLI) founded in 1993 and headed by his son, Mirzan, and especially the Perdana Leadership Foundation, Dr. Mahathir' s version of an American presidential library, established in 2003, are the vehicles for his intense agitation work. Tapping into the ideological three anti-ism common to Islamism, totalitarianism and the extreme left, Tun Mahathir launched a jihad for peace of sorts at his so-called Perdana Global Peace Forum held in Kuala Lumpur between December 15-17, 2005. The motto of the propaganda jamboree was "Peace Dividends/ War Profits," and its website featured a quote from American ultraleftist Eric Garris, characterizing the US-led international intervention in Iraq as "globalization at the point of a gun." Among the invited speakers were British Islamist Hafeez Ahmed Mossadeq, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, British MP George Galloway, former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke, London-based Pakistani Trotzkyite Tariq Ali, Canadian propagandist Michel Chossudovsky, and a group of Palestinian children. Chossudovsky, Canada's top far-left conspiracy theorist, masquerading as professor of economics at the University of Ottawa, is the owner of globalresearch.ca, a thriving three-antiist online propaganda business. Chossudovsky and Mossadeq told the enraptured audience, how the Americans and the British, with Israeli assistance, concocted the 9/11/01 and the 7/7/05, terrorist attacks on the United States and Britain.

Intense and vicious propaganda is what can be expected of Tun Dr. Mahathir and his Islamist and far-left media and university-based supporters. His agenda will be amply served by a new tool, the Non-aligned News Network (NNN) a news agency launched in Kuala Lumpur in November by the Malaysian government in its capacity as Chair-Nation of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). In addition to three-Western agitation, NNN is designed to give a positive spin to the image of the totalitarian regimes lording over most NAM nations. At NNN's founding conference, official representatives of Malaysia, Iran, Cuba, Syria, etc., attacked what they see as biased Western reporting. Veiled criticism started with Mahathir's successor, Malaysian Prime Minister Dato Seri Abdullah Ahmed Badawi's statement: "Each country should have the right and freedom to tell its own story from its own perspective." Morteza Granghad, the head of Iran's state television insisted that since the "western media wages (sic) war against developing countries, through NNN we can ... respond to this threat". Ernesto Lopez Dominguez, president of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television sounded most knowledgeable: "Disinformation is silent and continuous terrorism ... It qualifies as mental genocide, as it deprives audiences from ideas and arguments on key issues for their own existence." It was, however, Syrian Information Minister Mahdi Dakhlallah who attracted most sympathy when complaining that Western media reporting about his country was so unbalanced that "we will not be surprised if Syria is blamed for causing the tsunami in Asia, the earthquake in Pakistan and even the bird flu." Once NNN is fully functional in 2006, the Year of the Dog, the likes of Mahathir bin-Mohamad, Mohammad Ahmedinajad, Fidel Castro, Bashar al-Assad, Robert Mugabe and others, will at last get the fair media treatment they amply deserve. Fortunately, in the intellectual context, even after three decades of shrill hateful messages courtesy of Dr. Mahathir bin-Mohamad. there is room left in Malaysia for a different discourse. On January 6, 2006, Tan Sri Dr. Nureddin Sopiee the CEO and Chairman of Malaysia's International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) succumbed to thyroid cancer and he is only 61. His analytical swan song, published in the Pacific Forum was an informative, balanced and highly relevant essay titled "The Clash of Civilizations vs. the War on Terror: Some Hard Facts." He will be missed.