Source:
https://scmp.com/article/426027/tread-lightly

Tread lightly

In the 1920s, a young Japanese academic made a pilgrimage to the west that would reshape the course of East Asia. At a time when his Chinese contemporaries were visiting Europe to work in factories and imbibe socialism at its source, Kaname Akamatsu was interested in how western Europe and the US had monopolised the industrial revolution.

Akamatsu's idea was to identify the best practices and technology. His most cherished souvenir from his trip was a mechanical computer, which he put to use working out how Japanese textile makers had gone from near extinction in the late 19th century to global dominance. Sound familiar? Asia's success stories have all taken pages from Japan's book.

But times have changed, and the cold war is long over, together with the historical circumstances that made it possible for Japan to wall off its manufacturing sector from foreign competition while taking full advantage of the rich markets of America and Europe. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Japan has declined precipitously, both as a regional and international power. It is no accident that China is seen as the power player in the 'six-party' talks that get underway in Beijing today to sort out the Korean peninsula crisis, or that Japan is considered lucky to be invited at all. China held the invitation list, and in its early versions, Japan was not included.

At the talks, Japan is more likely to be a deal breaker than a deal maker. Although it sides with the United States in insisting North Korea dismantle its nuclear weapons programme, it also has issues that will only complicate the discussions - such as North Korea's abductions of Japanese citizens in the 1980s, for which Kim Jong-il apologised a year ago. Meanwhile, Japan is creating a fog of anxieties about its military intentions and the focus of its alliances, in response to the North Korean missile threat.

In a controversial interview last February, defence minister Shigeru Ishiba hinted at nuclear deterrence, a taboo since Japan suffered in August 1945 the first, and so far only, nuclear strikes against civilian populations. Is Japan's confidence in the US nuclear umbrella eroding? Is the US encouraging Japan to go beyond being a military-service supplier to the Pentagon and to become its nuclear ally? Or is Japan, with its still considerable wealth and technological prowess, simply adrift, its nuclear potential a vast unknown in the regional balance of power? Nobody knows the answer, and Japan's characteristic ambiguity, coupled with a decade of political and economic stasis, makes for a dangerous level of risk and uncertainty. Like a blind but still powerful tiger, Japan is capable of great destruction.

But if China once learned lessons from Japan about rapid growth, now it has a chance to teach Japan lessons in diplomacy. The first thing it must teach is to look forward, not to the past. There are some signs that China is doing just that. Each August, Japanese politicians pay their annual visit to the Yasukuni Shrine in downtown Tokyo, a Shinto memorial to all Japan's war dead, including war criminals, and just as regularly, Sino-Japanese relations go into deep freeze. According to reports of a mid-August visit to China by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda, Premier Wen Jiabao is ready to prevent 'such things' from further tying up relations, and diplomatic signals have gone out that a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, suspended for two years because of his shrine visits, is now in the offing.

The relationship between Japan and China is often fraught with drama. More than a decade after the cold war's end, such volatility is no longer affordable. If China wants to keep the blind tiger caged, it must treat it gently.

Edith Terry is the editor of the Post's opinion pages, and the author of How Asia Got Rich: Japan, China and the Asian Miracle