(From the archives) Originally posted on October 17, 2012 by markdowe
JAPAN & CHINA
Intro: — Invasion, genocide and an utter lack of remorse. Why Japan and China are now on the verge of a terrifying new war
1.
A few years ago, nobody in Asia gave much thought to the Senkaku islands. They form a cluster of eight pimples in the East China Sea, mid-way between Taiwan and Japanese Okinawa, devoid of people, culture and — by all accounts — beauty.
Yet suddenly, they have become the focus of a dispute between China and Japan which is growing so bitter that doomsters fear Beijing might even go to war over them.
The dispute is one of a dozen involving islands off the Asian mainland — some claimed by Vietnam, others by South Korea, others again by the Philippines — in which China is wielding a big stick.
See also (including a regional map):
In some cases, it covets fish stocks around the rocks, in others there is oil under the sea; elsewhere, Beijing merely wants to extend its territorial waters.
What alarms the United States, as well as the regional powers, is the ferocity with which China is pursuing its claims.
The row about the Senkakus escalated when the Tokyo government recently purchased them from their owner, a Japanese businessman. In the past few weeks, the ownership of the islands has provoked demonstrations in a dozen Chinese cities, outbreaks of violence and vandalism against Japanese targets which have prompted some of its industrial giants — Nissan, Honda, Canon, Panasonic — to shut down their plants in that country.
Some Japanese residents of China have shut themselves in their homes for safety. They feel unable to rely on the Chinese police for protection, because it is impossible for sustained vandalism to happen without official acquiescence. Meanwhile, the Chinese government continues to issue tough statements about the islands, which it calls the Diaoyus.
Washington, as well as Tokyo, is alarmed by the spectacle of China playing rough.
Nobody forgets that in the past, the Chinese have sometimes used force to get their way in border disputes: they occupied Tibet and fought a bitter war with Vietnam. Fears persist about China’s obsessive determination to reunite the mainland with offshore Taiwan, left in the old Chinese government’s hands after the 1949 communist revolution.
The quarrel over the Senkakus has reawakened atavistic Chinese hostility and resentment towards Japan, which goes back more than a century.
In 1894, the Japanese seized and colonised the Korean peninsula — a staging post towards an occupation of China — and sank a Chinese fleet. China’s Qing regime had to sign a humiliating peace surrendering part of Manchuria — effectively north-east China — and the Pescadore islands, off modern Taiwan.
Then, on September 18, 1931, the Japanese staged a faked attack on their own railway in their sector of Manchuria, blamed the Chinese, and used the incident as a pretext to overrun all of that region. (That date lives in infamy in China — which is why violent demonstrations took place recently in the country.)
The Japanese renamed the area Manchukuo, and installed the emperor Pu Yi as their puppet ruler.
In the decade that followed, they extended their empire with a ruthlessness that shocked the world. In 1932, after a Chinese mob in Shanghai attacked five Japanese monks in the city, the Japanese air force took reprisals by bombing the entire city, killing thousands of civilians.
In 1937, Japanese army officers manufactured a new incident at the ancient Marco Polo bridge outside the northern Chinese city of Tientsin — in which the Japanese had a garrison under the terms of a treaty. Claiming that their troops had been fired on by Chinese soldiers, they launched a full-scale invasion of China. What happened thereafter has never been forgotten or forgiven — not least because today’s Japanese are reluctant to admit past war crimes.
Having fought their way through Shanghai, sacking and killing, they embarked on a campaign which showed the world the nature of Japanese militarism.
Tokyo’s soldiers marched on the Chinese Nationalist capital, Nanking, killing and burning everything in their path in the spirit of ‘Bushido’ — the ‘Code of the Warrior’. Their route led them through Suchow, one of the oldest cities in China, famous for its silk embroideries, palaces and temples set beside the Tai Hu lake.
On November 19 in heavy rain, Japanese troops overran Suchow, ‘the Venice of China’, then spent days sacking the city. Thousands of women were seized to be raped by the conquerors, and most of the rest of the population fled.
Prince Asaka Yashuhiko, uncle of the Japanese emperor Hirohito, took personal command of the 50,000-strong army. His men went on to storm Nanking, overcoming a much larger Chinese garrison. Then an order was issued systematically to kill thousands of Chinese prisoners, whom the conquerors despised for accepting defeat, and whom they had no means to feed.
A Japanese soldier named Azuma wrote: ‘They all walked in droves, like ants crawling on the ground . . . a herd of ignorant sheep . . . whispering to each other. It felt quite foolish to think that we had been fighting to the death against these ignorant slaves, some were even 12-year-old boys’.
On the evening of December 17, 1939, the Japanese herded thousands of prisoners, their hands bound, to the bank of the Yangtze river. There, abruptly, Japanese machine-gunners opened fire. Within minutes, amidst frenzied screams of excitement from the killers, and of terror and agony from their victims, hundreds of Chinese were thrashing wounded or dying beside the river.
The Japanese conducted their slaughters with refinements of cruelty that appalled the world, which soon learned of them. In Nanking, having killed the military prisoners, they turned on the civilian population.
Corpses were left in heaps outside the city walls; the river ran red with blood. Soldiers not only bayoneted thousands of victims, but proudly sent home photographs of themselves with their victims.
Imai Mastake, a Japanese correspondent, wrote: ‘On Hsiakwan wharves, there was the dark silhouette of a mountain made of dead bodies. About 50 to 100 people were toiling there, dragging bodies . . . into the Yangtze. The bodies dripped blood, some of them still alive and moaning weakly, their limbs twitching.
‘The labourers were working in total silence, as in a pantomime. After a while, the coolies had done their job of dragging corpses, and the soldiers lined them up along the river. Rat-tat-tat machine-gun fire could be heard. The coolies fell backwards into the river and were swallowed by the raging currents. The pantomime was over. A Japanese officer . . . estimated that 20,000 persons had been executed.’
Another correspondent, Yukio Omata, watched Chinese prisoners meeting their fate at the killing ground of Hsiakwan. ‘Those in the first row were beheaded, those in the second row were forced to dump the severed bodies into the river before they themselves were beheaded. The killing went on non-stop, from morning until night.’
Westerners know all about Japanese atrocities towards our own soldiers and civilians in World War II, but sometimes forget that 15 million Chinese died during Japan’s campaigns in their country between 1937 and 1945. Indeed, some Chinese historians claim the total was up to 50 million.
No matter what is the true number, the Japanese behaved unspeakably towards the people of China, and have never shown much penitence. While modern Germans are acutely conscious of the crimes of Hitler, most modern Japanese are oblivious to the crimes of their own forebears.
Some of their apologists claim Japan has said sorry for its role in World War II. But a deafening silence persists in Japan’s schools and universities on the subject, and there are yawning gaps in their textbooks.
Every Japanese is taught that their country was the victim of the first atomic bombs. Few know their grandfathers enjoyed nothing more than chopping off a few Chinese heads. As recently as 2008, the commander of the Japanese air force, General Toshio Tamogami, published an essay suggesting that Japan had done nothing to be ashamed of in the war. Tamogami complained bitterly: ‘Even now, there are many people who think that our country’s aggression caused unbearable suffering to the countries of Asia.’
Not so, said the general: ‘We need to realise that many Asian countries take a positive view of the Greater East Asia War. It is certainly a false accusation that our country was an aggressor nation.’
Tamogami said that Japan was entitled by treaty to act as it did in China, and claimed that Korea, during its half century as a Japanese colony, was ‘prosperous and safe’. He rejected the verdicts of the Allied tribunals which convicted Japan’s war criminals in 1945 for their barbaric treatment of enemy troops, including Britons.
To be fair, the Tokyo government sacked the general following furious protests from Beijing. But it remains amazing that one of Japan’s most senior commanders could make such claims in the 21st century.
But Tamogami wrote what many Japanese nationalists think, including some academic historians.
Not only the Chinese government, but also ordinary people, are enraged when such things are said in Japan, and when Japanese courts reject lawsuits from Chinese former sex-slaves and forced labourers.
Few Japanese, too, recognise the enormity of the atrocities committed by the wartime Japanese Army’s biological warfare group, Unit 731, for which no one was ever punished. Under its aegis, thousands of men, women and children — including foreign prisoners — were killed in gruesome experiments designed to test the limits of the human body.
Unsurprisingly, there is real popular Chinese bitterness towards Japan, and it explodes into the open when the Beijing government highlights such a quarrel as that about the Senkaku islands.
Whatever are China’s motives, its behaviour shows a growing willingness to intimidate and bully its neighbours. Nobody is sure just how far Beijing will press its claims in the East China Sea — perhaps including China’s rulers themselves.
Their handling of international relations is often clumsy and brutal. They are still groping, as they explore how best to exploit their ever-growing power and wealth.
But all this makes China a dangerous nation. Its neighbours think so: they are clamouring for closer defence ties with the United States. Japan is installing new U.S. anti-missile radar systems, which means that the Americans may yet find themselves drawn into the growing dispute.
China has gone to war in the past to make good its claims to territory. It is possible that it will do so again.
The Senkakus scarcely feature on a large-scale map. Yet one day they, or one of the other disputed island groups in the troubled waters off China, could precipitate a breakdown of global peace — a crisis that would have fearful implications for us all.
2.
The bickering over islands is a serious threat to the region’s peace and prosperity…
THE countries of Asia do not exactly see the world in a grain of sand, but they have identified grave threats to the national interest in the tiny outcrops and shoals scattered off their coasts. The summer has seen a succession of maritime disputes involving China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines. Lately, there have been more anti-Japanese riots in cities across China because of a dispute over a group of uninhabited islands known to the Japanese as the Senkakus and to the Chinese as the Diaoyus. Toyota and Honda closed down their factories. Amid heated rhetoric on both sides, one Chinese newspaper has helpfully suggested skipping the pointless diplomacy and moving straight to the main course by serving up Japan with an atom bomb.
That, thank goodness, is grotesque hyperbole: the government in Beijing is belatedly trying to play down the dispute, aware of the economic interests in keeping the peace. Which all sounds very rational, until you consider history—especially the parallel between China’s rise and that of imperial Germany over a century ago. Back then nobody in Europe had an economic interest in conflict; but Germany felt that the world was too slow to accommodate its growing power, and crude, irrational passions like nationalism took hold. China is re-emerging after what it sees as 150 years of humiliation, surrounded by anxious neighbours, many of them allied to America. In that context, disputes about clumps of rock could become as significant as the assassination of an archduke.
Optimists point out that the latest scuffle is mainly a piece of political theatre—the product of elections in Japan and a leadership transition in China. The Senkakus row has boiled over now because the Japanese government is buying some of the islands from a private Japanese owner. The aim was to keep them out of the mischievous hands of Tokyo’s China-bashing governor, who wanted to buy them himself. China, though, was affronted. It strengthened its own claim and repeatedly sent patrol boats to encroach on Japanese waters. That bolstered the leadership’s image, just before Xi Jinping takes over.
More generally, argue the optimists, Asia is too busy making money to have time for making war. China is now Japan’s biggest trading partner. China is not interested in territorial expansion. The Chinese government has enough problems at home: why would it look for trouble abroad?
Asia does indeed have reasons to keep relations good, and this latest squabble will probably die down, just as others have in the past. But each time an island row flares up, attitudes harden and trust erodes. Two years ago, when Japan arrested the skipper of a Chinese fishing boat for ramming a vessel just off the islands, it detected retaliation when China blocked the sale of rare earths essential to Japanese industry.
Growing nationalism in Asia, especially China, aggravates the threat. Whatever the legality of Japan’s claim to the islands, its roots lie in brutal empire-building. The media of all countries play on prejudice that has often been inculcated in schools. Having helped create nationalism and exploited it when it suited them, China’s leaders now face vitriolic criticism if they do not fight their country’s corner. A recent poll suggested that just over half of China’s citizens thought the next few years would see a “military dispute” with Japan.
The islands matter, therefore, less because of fishing, oil or gas than as counters in the high-stakes game for Asia’s future. Every incident, however small, risks setting a precedent. Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines fear that if they make concessions, China will sense weakness and prepare the next demand. China fears that if it fails to press its case, America and others will conclude that they are free to scheme against it.
Co-operation and deterrence
Asia’s inability to deal with the islands raises doubts about how it would cope with a genuine crisis, on the Korean peninsula, say, or across the Strait of Taiwan. China’s growing taste for throwing its weight around feeds deep-seated insecurities about the way it will behave as a dominant power. And the tendency for the slightest tiff to escalate into a full-blown row presents problems for America, which both aims to reassure China that it welcomes its rise, and also uses the threat of military force to guarantee that the Pacific is worthy of the name.
Some of the solutions will take a generation. Asian politicians have to start defanging the nationalist serpents they have nursed; honest textbooks would help a lot. For decades to come, China’s rise will be the main focus of American foreign policy. Barack Obama’s “pivot” towards Asia is a useful start in showing America’s commitment to its allies. But China needs reassuring that, rather than seeking to contain it as Britain did 19th-century Germany, America wants a responsible China to realise its potential as a world power. A crudely political WTO complaint will add to Chinese worries.
Given the tensions over the islands (and Asia’s irreconcilable versions of history), three immediate safeguards are needed. One is to limit the scope for mishaps to escalate into crises. A collision at sea would be less awkward if a code of conduct set out how vessels should behave and what to do after an accident. Governments would find it easier to work together in emergencies if they routinely worked together in regional bodies. Yet, Asia’s many talking shops lack clout because no country has been ready to cede authority to them.
A second safeguard is to rediscover ways to shelve disputes over sovereignty, without prejudice. The incoming President Xi should look at the success of his predecessor, Hu Jintao, who put the “Taiwan issue” to one side. With the Senkakus (which Taiwan also claims), both Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping were happy to leave sovereignty to a later generation to decide. That makes even more sense if the islands’ resources are worth something: even state-owned companies would hesitate to put their oil platforms at risk of a military strike. Once sovereignty claims have been shelved, countries can start to share out the resources—or better still, declare the islands and their waters a marine nature reserve.
But not everything can be solved by co-operation, and so the third safeguard is to bolster deterrence. With the Senkakus, America has been unambiguous: although it takes no position on sovereignty, they are administered by Japan and hence fall under its protection. This has enhanced stability, because America will use its diplomatic prestige to stop the dispute escalating and China knows it cannot invade. Mr Obama’s commitment to other Asian islands, however, is unclear.
The role of China is even more central. Its leaders insist that its growing power represents no threat to its neighbours. They also claim to understand history. A century ago in Europe, years of peace and globalisation tempted leaders into thinking that they could afford to play with nationalist fires without the risk of conflagration. After this summer, Mr Xi and his neighbours need to grasp how much damage the islands are in fact causing. Asia needs to escape from a descent into corrosive mistrust. What better way for China to show that it is sincere about its peaceful rise than to take the lead?
Arts, reviews & current affairs 