Unwelcome guests

In the middle of last month, a group of Japanese businessmen from Osaka arrived at the five-star Zhuhai International Conference Centre for an event that was, by Japanese standards, utterly mundane - a company outing. In the Japanese corporate world, such trips are obligatory and aimed at fostering social harmony and conformity. The men let themselves go, and sex is often involved. In Zhuhai, the party seems to have got out of hand.

Days later, China's media launched saturation coverage of the Japanese 'sex orgy' in Zhuhai. It was front page news in the People's Daily, apostrophised by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan, and fired up Chinese internet chat rooms at the rate of 10,000 'hits' an hour. One person wrote: 'The Japanese are animals. They deliberately selected the date to humiliate the Chinese people', referring to September 18, the anniversary of the Japanese invasion of northeast China in 1931. The orgy reportedly took place from September 16 to 18.

Meanwhile, in Japan, media and commentators barely noted the event. Japan's largest financial daily, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported that the company had organised the off-site trip by 268 of its personnel, but denied that it had summoned 500 prostitutes to join them for a three-day orgy.

There is nothing odd about the contrast. Both Chinese and Japanese leaders are adroit at manipulating nationalistic sentiment, as well as the national media, to gain advantage in the larger economic and geopolitical issues that engage them. The immediate backdrop of the Zhuhai furore was a fight between China and Japan over access to Russian oil from the Angarsk field near Lake Baikal. Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasynov was in Beijing last week, supposedly to reassure the Chinese that they were valued clients. But his visit produced only vague generalities, not a decision. So it is easy to speculate that the media outrage over Zhuhai was fanned not only by public emotion but also by an official strategy to force Japan to back off the Angarsk deal.

Serious tensions between China and Japan have existed at least since the 14th century when the Ming dynasty closed its borders in response to the incursions of Japanese raiders along the coast. Historically, Japan was the only East Asian nation to challenge Chinese supremacy by declaring its own 'empire'. Japan in decline still represents a potent force, with an economy three times the size of China's. It is all the more crucial, then, that China and Japan strive for balance, rather than remaining stuck in ancient patterns of confrontation. With the Russian oil pipelines, China and Japan should be working together on regional solutions to Asia's complex energy supply and consumption problems. Working separately, they are clearly hostage to predatory Russian negotiators. There would be pricing and capital cost advantages to working jointly to organise the development and transport of energy supplies from the Russian Far East to the markets of northeast Asia, and this could be a model in other spheres.

The Japanese have a chilling phrase: Tabi no haji wa kakisute. It refers to the psychological shift that occurs outside Japan and the confines of its pressure-cooker culture, where every social interaction is tightly choreographed by relations of insider and outsider, shame and obligation.

Such attitudes are at least one cause of Japan's national decline. In a 21st century in which China is almost certain to be Asia's dominant player, Japan will need its goodwill - along with that of the rest of Asia. The Zhuhai incident may have been overblown for political reasons, but it points to the volatility and fragility of ties between Asia's two giants. The onus is on Japan to teach its citizens how to be better guests.

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