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Strategies & Market Trends : China Warehouse- More Than Crockery -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (895)	10/1/2003 2:28:07 PM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6370

Colin James: Feeling the weight of China 02.10.2003 COMMENT To feel the weight of China, go to Japan. Much of Japan's traditional culture was imported from China. Although it was long ago made distinctly Japanese, China's influence is visible in the script, religion and, deep down, in the arts. China's weight is also felt in the economy. Its size, entrepreneurial spirit and low wages are hollowing out Japan's traditional manufacturing industry. And China's weight is felt in international relations. Japan's immediate preoccupation is Korea, where centuries of conflict and Japan's none-too-gentle 20th-century occupation present an obstacle, although South Korea has been warming. Relations with impoverished North Korea are very prickly, mainly because of its nuclear ambitions. Japan's problem is that when the Koreas will unite - maybe in 10 years, maybe suddenly - there is no certainty about the terms. One certainty is that Japan will feel a need to foot much of the enormous cost of meshing two hugely different societies and economies. Wealthy Germany got indigestion with a far simpler absorption. South Koreans I have spoken to say medium-rich South Korea can't afford it on its own. But aid alone may not ensure a Japan-friendly Korea. China wants a China-friendly Korea. And such a Korea, Japanese analysts worry, might even be nuclear-capable. Hajime Izumi, professor of international relations and Korean Studies at the University of Shizuoka, says the best to hope for is a Korea "equidistant" between China and Japan. Japan worries, too, about the day Japan-friendly Taiwan is absorbed into China, and about China's Army modernisation programme. Japan would be less nervous if it could be confident China would take an internationalist approach, as it notably has in the World Trade Organisation. Some China-watchers I spoke to see the current leadership as of that ilk, eager to court the United States for economic reasons. But pre-19th-century imperial China treated surrounding states as tributaries and absorbed many of them. Some Japanese worry that mentality may redevelop in a stronger China. This is not a fear of invasion. But Japan feels vulnerable. How can it respond? Economic engagement with China and other Asian nations is an option. So is more active diplomacy. "Only when Japan makes a daily effort in establishing peace and stability in international society can it build a solid foundation for its own security," diplomatic journalist Yoichi Funabashi wrote last month. Japan is doing more peacemaking and peacekeeping, including having a lightly armed regiment in East Timor. It is to send unarmed logistic support troops to aid occupation forces in Iraq, partly responding to American pressure and partly because 88 per cent of its oil comes from the Middle East. But all this hangs on an increasingly inventive interpretation of Japan's constitutional constraint on assertive deployment of its military. And its blind eye to United States activity at its Japanese bases has tacitly breached its "three principles" rejecting nuclear arms. Few want nuclear arms - though if things turned ugly, Japan has the technology to go nuclear quickly and some I spoke to think it would. It is on the point of installing missile defences and could quickly acquire offensive missiles. But three generations after the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, public opinion is shifting, said Ken Jimbo, a 30-year-old who advises corporations and the Government on strategic issues. Younger Japanese wanted a more internationally active government, said Izumi, and were also less scarred by the pre-1945 legacy, about which their elders - and politicians in countries Japan occupied - remain highly sensitive. But the environment is being changed by the rise of terrorism, the US threat to withdraw troops from Korea to send to Iraq if other nations don't, China's rise and the potential for a unipolar east Asia unless Japan is more diplomatically assertive. And Japanese politics might also be changing. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party's factions, a force for stasis, are not the arbiters they were. The anti-war parties are mere shadows and the opposition, much of it on the LDP's right, is hawkish. Younger MPs are less wedded to the status quo. Newly reappointed Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi has pledged more peacekeeping contributions and more inventive interpretations. A parliamentary committee is exploring the constitutional issue. So bit by bit, Japan is changing. And its growing wish to prove itself a good and active international citizen might well counterbalance China. * Colin James visited Japan as the guest of the Japanese Government. nzherald.co.nz