Japanese wary of assets falling into Chinese hands
As Japan slumped into the depths of the global economic crisis last year, Chinese tourists were welcomed in Tokyo with open arms.
In the swish Ginza district, department stores rushed to take on Chinese-speaking staff to greet the one clientele that was not deserting them. Travel companies targeted Chinese tourists, resulting in thousands travelling to Sapporo early this month for the annual ice festival, while it was announced this week that 14 of the 96 new slots available at Tokyo's expanded Haneda Airport will be allocated to Chinese airlines.
But some aspects of Japan's increasing economic reliance on China have triggered a media backlash that may mirror broader resentment.
The latest edition of the usually reserved magazine Sapio contains a 24-page special report under the headline 'China will buy up Japan'. The article is less concerned with the souvenirs that the tourists are buying, than with the strategic industries, property and land that cash-flush Chinese are snapping up.
It tells of speculators from Shanghai and Beijing buying cheap blocks of Tokyo apartments and renting them out to Chinese students; of Chinese fish wholesalers outspending locals in Japan's revered fish markets; of reported efforts by a Chinese power company to purchase a stake in a Japanese firm that makes components for nuclear reactors and supplies Japan's Self-Defence Forces.
National security is at stake, the magazine states, citing a Chinese consortium's reported efforts to buy an uninhabited island between the main Japanese islands of Honshu and Shikoku. Quite what the Chinese want to do with the island remains unclear, although Sapio points out that it is strategically placed close to both Japanese and US naval bases. Other reports say Chinese investors have their eye on privately owned islands at the most southerly tip of the Okinawa chain, close to the sensitive and strategically important sea border between Japan and Taiwan.
The articles raise the question of whether these moves are simply of Chinese corporations looking for business opportunities, or whether they are encouraged and financially backed by the Beijing government.
Some see the articles as little more than scaremongering, but Yoichi Shimada, a professor of international relations at Fukui Prefectural University, believes they are tapping into a growing national sentiment.
Predictions last month that China had surpassed Japan as the world's second-largest economy were premature, but they served as something of a tipping point for the attitudes of many Japanese. As it turned out, Tokyo posted improved gross domestic product figures this month to keep Japan's nose in front, but Japanese pride had already been dented.
'China is without a doubt looking to expand its sphere of influence in the region and ... the administration of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has no clear strategy for dealing with Beijing,' Shimada said. 'The prime minister seems to regard the Chinese only as our friends and ... the Chinese are happy to act in that way in public, but I feel their aim is to acquire as much land, knowledge and influence as possible. And that means we Japanese have to be very careful.'
A row over mining rights in waters between the two countries appears to be blowing up again, with Tokyo threatening to complain to the UN if China goes ahead to drill in the disputed zones. Sharp diplomatic exchanges have also taken place over the Japan-controlled Diaoyu Islands - known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan but claimed by both Beijing and Taipei - and Okinotorishima, a rocky atoll that Japan claims is an island, thus enabling Tokyo to extend its sea territory further into the Pacific.
'The reason that China is giving in public for these moves is that it wishes to maximise its access to natural resources and fishing in the area,' said Masafumi Iida, a China expert at Japan's National Institute of Defence Studies. 'And that may be one factor - but of far more importance is China's developing naval strategy for the Pacific Ocean.'
It is not just tangible assets that China is buying, Sapio notes, railing at the Chinese trademark office accepting applications to register Japanese names as Chinese property. Even the iconic Mount Fuji no longer belongs to the country, it seems, as its name is registered to Hong Kong-based Fujisan Technology Stock.
Shimada believes this is part of a strategy of stealthy encroachment into all areas of Japan's business, security and society that should be ringing alarm bells in Tokyo. Instead the government has been silent.
'Of particular concern should be the buying of land near Japanese defence facilities. The government here has a nonchalant attitude towards this sort of thing, but I believe we have to ... prevent this buying spree.'
In the lead
China had been expected to surpass Japan as the second-biggest economy
Tokyo quashed that prediction by posting 2009 GDP, compared with China's US$4.9 trillion, in US dollars of: $5.1tr
