Look what Chinese muscle-flexing is doing in this region: others are seeing the need to flex their own.
Japan, a pacifist nation since two of its cities were obliterated by nuclear bombs nearly 70 years ago, has just reinterpreted its constitution, expanding the role of its military particularly in overseas missions.
Not too long ago, this shift – described as “tectonic” by analysts with personal memories of imperialist Japan – would have raised regional alarm over the resurgence of Japanese militarism.
This time several countries including the Philippines, which suffered under the Japanese during World War II, are embracing Tokyo’s shift to “collective defense,” with President Aquino saying he would welcome an amendment of Japan’s pacifist constitution.
With China seen to be in a frenzy of construction activities in disputed waters, some of its neighbors are turning to Asia’s other economic giant, Japan, to provide the counterweight.
If this entails seeing Japan boosting its military power and taking on a greater role in regional security, then so be it.
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Some people from certain countries that also suffered under Japanese occupation during the war have asked me why Filipinos seem to have forgotten those atrocities, including the unresolved issue of comfort women.
They are unhappy with the continuing visits of Japanese leaders to the shrine that honors the country’s war dead, including officers classified as war criminals. And they are riled by Japanese attempts to rewrite war history.
Maybe Pinoys have short memories, or most of us slept through our history lessons. Only a few are left of the generation that experienced the war.
The horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have also dwarfed the atrocities committed by the Japanese Kempeitai. With Emperor Hirohito leading the surrender and renouncing his divinity, Japan has instead been seen as an example of grace in defeat.
Surrender was followed by decades of Japanese pacifism, during which the country worked hard to lick its grievous wounds and rise from the ashes of war.
In peace Japan focused on recovery, industrializing rapidly, shooting past its Asian neighbors toward prosperity and becoming the world’s second largest economy.
Younger generations of Filipinos associate Japan not with the Kempeitai but with video games, manga, Sony and Toyota.
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China has experienced similar progress, after Deng Xiaoping opened his country’s mammoth market to the world and unleashed his compatriots’ inborn entrepreneurial spirit. To get rich is glorious, he told them, and that’s exactly what they did.
Like Japan on its road to Asian tiger status and an exalted seat in the community of nations, China’s dramatic progress was achieved in three decades without a world war or armed conflict in its neighborhood.
Today, China’s new leader Xi Jinping looks set to risk that peace – and his own country’s prosperity – by alienating neighbors through its territorial claims.
Some analysts think the Communist Party under Xi believes the gains of China’s “mining operation” (everything I see is mine) in disputed waters outweigh the risks.
One neutral observer told me that Beijing is promoting the idea of ineffective multilateralism to support its preference for bilateral settlement of disputes.
The divide-and-rule tactic is pushed particularly in its dealings with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Beijing is wooing certain ASEAN members with carrots such as preferential trade and investment terms and outright aid.
The courtship can be blunted by the only other Asian nation rich enough to pursue the same tack of winning friends and influencing the region: Japan.
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Washington must be pleased that Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet has reinterpreted the pacifist Japanese constitution, allowing the country to ramp up military cooperation with treaty ally Uncle Sam under the principle of “collective defense.”
It still won’t allow Tokyo to deploy combat troops, but Japanese forces can provide protection and logistics support to its allies under this new principle.
A stronger military role for Japan in this region will be tempered by its stagnant economy, but it still has the world’s sixth largest defense budget. And its additional military contribution to allies will ease the burden on the US, whose economy has not fully recovered from the last downturn.
The Philippines, in need of allies and with no guarantee that Uncle Sam will come to our aid in the face of aggressive Chinese moves within our 200-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ), now welcomes a stronger Japan.
Someone from another country with strong memories of the war warned me that we can’t count on Japan either. But that’s not what our government is seeing at this point.
Last year Tokyo committed to donate 10 cutters valued at $12 million each to the Philippine Coast Guard, to boost our capability to patrol our territorial waters. The donation is said to be Japan’s largest to date in terms of security-related foreign aid.
Perhaps one day soon we can even obtain at friendly rates at least one of the diesel-powered stealth submarines used by the Japanese navy.
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Beijing could in fact find some sympathy in Manila when it comes to its maritime dispute with Japan and even Vietnam. China does share EEZs with these two adjacent neighbors.
But Beijing should differentiate these cases from waters way beyond its EEZ as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, to which it is a signatory.
Claiming nearly the entire South China Sea, leaving just enough for countries in the region to claim as beach areas, is simply ridiculous and smacks of territorial greed. And reinforcing that claim by building an artificial island within pissing distance of Palawan gives an indication of how China intends to behave on the global stage if left unchecked.
The report on the artificial island, on top of the video showing a Chinese ship chasing and then sinking a Vietnamese boat near a Chinese oil rig installed in disputed waters, marked the tipping point. They spooked even people who were willing to give China the benefit of the doubt and believed the rhetoric about its “peaceful rise.”
The tussle with Vietnam was made worse by Beijing’s initial comment that its ships did not see the Vietnamese vessel and the sinking was an accident.
China’s road to prosperity was marred by underhanded ways, until it decided that violating international rules on fair trade and competition was holding back its economic progress. Many of the unfair and sometimes dangerous trade practices have not been fully eliminated, such as the use of hazardous substances in food products, medicine and toys.
International ties are built on trust. China does not seem to grasp the value of this one commodity. At this point, our government is putting its trust not on its old friend China but former enemy Japan.