Source: ECON
WATCH
Chinese television these days and you might conclude that the outbreak
of war with Japan over what it calls the Senkaku and China the Diaoyu
islands is only a matter of time. You might well be right. Since Japan
in September announced it would “nationalise” three of the islands that
had been privately owned, China, which has long contested Japan’s
sovereignty over them, has also started challenging its resolve to keep
control of them. So both countries are claiming to own the islands and
both are pretending to administer them. China this week announced its
intention to map them thoroughly. Something has to give.
In
response to the deteriorating climate, Kurt Campbell, assistant
secretary of state in President Barack Obama’s administration, flew to
the region this week, urging “cooler heads to prevail”. Hotter heads are
more in fashion. Hopes that recent changes in leadership in China and
Japan might bring an easing of tensions have been disappointed. Hitoshi
Tanaka of the Institute for International Strategy in Tokyo notes that
the emergence last September of Shinzo Abe, a right-wing nationalist, as
head of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party was influenced by the feeling
that Japan needed to take a tougher line with China. In December Mr Abe
became prime minister for a second time, after an election campaign in
which he promised just that.
Since then China, too, has become
more assertive over the islands. Already, in his speech to the Communist
Party’s five-yearly congress in November, Hu Jintao, its outgoing
leader, had declared China’s ambition to “build itself into a maritime
power”, the first time this had been stated so explicitly. Nor is it
clear that his successor, the less wooden Xi Jinping, who will be named
president in March, shares his predecessors’ habitual caution in
dealings with America. He will surely see no benefit in compromising
with Japan, which is despised by many Chinese. And, with little or no
military experience, he will want to appear a strong commander-in-chief.
It
is against this backdrop that televised military punditry is booming in
China. On current-affairs programmes, armchair warriors pontificate
about the Diaoyus. Newspapers propagate a uniformly jingoistic analysis
of the increasing likelihood of armed conflict.
They are not
making it up. Last month a small aircraft of China’s State Oceanic
Bureau flew into what Japan considers its territorial airspace over the
Senkakus. Flying too low to be detected by Japan’s land-based radar, it
was spotted too late for a scramble of eight F-15 fighter jets to prove
effective. Since then, Japan has deployed Airborne Warning and Control
Systems (AWACS). On January 7th Chinese patrol ships spent more than 13
hours near the islands—longer than ever before, said Japanese officials.
On January 10th, when two Japanese F-15s scrambled to intercept a
Chinese plane flying near the islands, China scrambled its own fighter
jets.
Now the Japanese air force is weighing whether to fire
warning shots if Chinese aircraft come into its airspace, for the first
time since 1987, when the former Soviet Union intruded. For General Peng
Guanqian of the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences, interviewed on a
Chinese web portal, this would amount to the first shot of “actual
combat”. China should then “respond without courtesy”, he said. The
Japanese press reported that America had also warned Japan against
firing shots.
A widely read, if shrill, Beijing newspaper,
Global Times,
has argued that Japan might not be deterred and “we need to prepare for
the worst”. Japan, it said, had become the “vanguard” of an American
strategy to “contain China”. The implication was that China should also
be ready to take on America, which has made clear that its security
treaty with Japan covers the disputed islets.
The dangers of
combat are rarely spelt out to Chinese audiences. China would widely be
seen as the provocateur. Japan is its second-largest trading partner and
one of its biggest foreign investors. The knock-on effects would
include an escalation of unease about China around the region. Other
countries with territorial disputes with it, such as India, Vietnam and
the Philippines, would look even more keenly towards America for
support.
So much to lose
The risk that the dispute might
cause a serious rift with America must haunt some of China’s diplomats.
Many of them believe that this would thwart China’s ambition to become a
respected global power. So calmer voices may yet prevail. A botched
military engagement could inflame nationalist sentiment at home and turn
it against the party for its perceived incompetence. For all their
rapid acquisition of sophisticated hardware in recent years, the Chinese
armed forces lack the combat experience that might give them confidence
in their ability to prevail. As for projecting force, the islands lie
closer to Japan (as well as to Taiwan, which also claims them) than to
the Chinese mainland.
But China’s foreign-policy behaviour has
become more unpredictable of late. Many of its officials believe that
America has been weakened by the global financial crisis and
debilitating wars, even as China has grown stronger. Toughness abroad
might also give Mr Xi, a nationalist, some cover for a more risk-taking
approach to handling problems at home. In recent weeks there have been a
few signs that he might be a bit more open-minded than his
predecessors. A recent crisis involving a strike by journalists at a
popular and relatively liberal newspaper was resolved without obvious
repercussions for the journalists involved. As dense smog this week
choked Beijing and several other cities, China’s press has had unusually
free rein to complain about air pollution.
The firmness of Mr
Xi’s grip on policymaking is hard to divine. It will not be clear for
some weeks who, if anyone, will have day-to-day control over foreign
policy in the decision-making standing committee of the party’s
Politburo, which for the past decade has lacked a dedicated
foreign-policy handler. It is also possible that rising tensions with
Japan reflect China’s leaders’ distraction by struggles relating to the
succession. Lacking clear direction, bureaucracies may be trying to look
tough.
Meanwhile, Mr Abe launched a trip to Vietnam, Thailand and
Indonesia on January 16th, his first journey abroad since taking
office. Despite the inclusion of Vietnam, his officials talk of “values
diplomacy”, an attempt to forge closer ties with democratic allies.
Though the mission is ostensibly to foster closer economic ties with a
fast-growing region, countering the Chinese threat seems an equally
pressing motive. Some Japanese experts believe the trip too provocative.
China probably saw it as a bid at diplomatic encirclement.
Even
if armed clashes are averted, tensions will persist. Mr Tanaka lists
three essential elements of any easing: to cool public sentiment; to
reaffirm the importance of the bilateral relationship; and to find a way
of discussing the Senkakus. Not one of these is yet in sight.
Silver expert 