Martin Jacques - When China Rules the World

Since 1949 Taiwan has been China ’s most acute regional problem. It is conceivable, however, that Taiwan might be placed on the back burner for a decade or more, during which time longer-term trends might effectively resolve the issue one way or another. If that should happen, then by far the most difficult issue facing China in East Asia would be Japan. [987] [987] For example, Shi Yinhong, workshop on Sino-Japanese relations, Renmin-Aichi University conference, Beijing, 8 December 2005. Until the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5, which was a direct consequence of the Meiji Restoration in 1868 — with Japan ’s turn to the West, rejection of its own continent, especially China, and its expansionist ambitions — relations between China and Japan had been relatively harmonious. Japan had been a long-term tributary state, duly honouring and acknowledging its debt to Chinese civilization and the Confucian tradition, even if at times it proved a distant and somewhat recalcitrant one — which, given its island status and advanced civilization, was hardly surprising. [988] [988] Park, ‘ Small States and the Search for Sovereignty in Sinocentric Asia’, pp. 3- 11.

For well over a century, however, following the 1894 war, China ’s relationship with Japan has been far worse than that with any other power. Many Chinese still see that war and the subsequent Treaty of Shimonoseki as the darkest hour in China ’s ‘century of humiliation’. China ’s ignominious defeat and the extremely onerous terms inflicted on China in the peace left a particularly bitter taste. Defeat by what was seen as an inferior nation within the Chinese world order was considered to be a far greater humiliation than losing to the Western barbarians, and served to undermine the prevailing Chinese world-view. This was a case — in the Confucian discourse — of the student beating up the teacher or the younger brother beating up the older brother. [989] [989] Peter Hays Gries, China ’s New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 39, 70–71.

The ignominy visited upon China in the 1894-5 war was compounded and accentuated by Japan’s occupation of north-east China in 1931 and then its full-scale invasion of north-east, east and parts of central China in 1937; the scars these hostilities left have never been healed. To this day, the Nanjing Massacre defines the nature and identity of the Japanese as far as the Chinese are concerned and therefore in large measure their attitude towards Japan. It may have taken place seventy years ago, but it remains an open wound, as present in the relationship between the two countries as if it had happened yesterday. Even the numbers killed — 300,000 in the Chinese interpretation — is still a highly charged issue. [990] [990] Ibid., p. 79. The best known recent book, arguing that over 300,000 were killed, is Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking (London: Penguin, 1998). For a Japanese view that denies there was a massacre of any kind, see Higashinakano Shudo, The Nanking Massacre: Facts Versus Fiction, a Historian’s Quest for the Truth (Tokyo: Sekai Shuppan, 2005), especially Chapter 17. The question remains deeply contentious, with a group of right-wing Liberal Democrat deputies suggesting in a report in June 2007 that only 20,000 died; see ‘Japan MPs Play Down 1937 Killings’, 19 June 2007, on www.bbc.co.uk/news. Of course, the reason why these questions remain so alive is because the Japanese have failed to apologize properly, or demonstrate any serious sign of confronting their own past, unlike the contrition that the Germans have shown for their behaviour in the Second World War. [991] [991] The English-language Japan Times , for example, constantly carries stories about attempts by Chinese and Korean citizens to seek legal redress for their treatment in the last war, which the Japanese courts summarily dismiss; see for instance, Japan Times , 20 April 2005. Also Satoh Haruko, ‘The Odd Couple: Japan and China — the Politics of History and Identity’, Commentary , 4, (9 August 2006), Japanese Institute of International Affairs. The Japanese paid dearly for their defeat at the hands of the United States and Europe — with huge casualties, the Tokyo trials, the confiscation of its overseas assets and the American occupation — but they have shown little remorse towards their Asian neighbours for their country’s often barbaric behaviour, which was far worse than anything Japan meted out to the Western powers. The Nanjing Massacre was the worst example, with the mass killing and rape of civilians, but this was repeated on a smaller scale elsewhere in China, while the Japanese occupation of Korea was also marked by considerable cruelty. [992] [992] Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China , 2nd edn (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999), pp. 423-4, 439. Japan’s occupation of Korea between 1910 and 1945 included sex slavery and the kidnapping of Korean women for the Japanese army, the burning down of Korean villages, the banning of the Korean language and religions, and the forced changing of names. The numerous apologies that Japan has given have been little more than formulaic, while the courts have refused to compensate the individual victims of crimes committed in Japan ’s name. The grudging attitude towards its Asian neighbours is symptomatic of post-Meiji Japan — respect for the West and contempt for Asia. Nor, for most of the post-war period, has Japan needed to rethink its attitudes. [993] [993] Interview with Kyoshi Kojima, Tokyo, June 1999. It rapidly re-established itself as the dominant power in the region, in a different league to its poorer neighbours, while the United States, its sponsor and protector, neither required nor desired Japan to apologize to Communist China during the Cold War, given that a new and very different set of priorities now applied.

Fast-forward fifty years, however, and East Asia presents a different picture. Japan no longer constitutes the great exception, a Western level of development surrounded by a sea of backwardness. On the contrary, the first four Asian tigers enjoy a GDP per head not far short of Japan ’s, [994] [994] In 2001 both Hong Kong and Singapore enjoyed a slightly higher GDP per head than Japan, while Taiwan’s was 78 per cent and South Korea’s was 71 per cent of Japan’s; Angus Maddison, The World Economy: Historical Statistics (Paris: OECD, 2003), pp. 184-5. living standards in the region have risen enormously, and Japan ’s old nemesis, China, has been the subject of a remarkable economic transformation. In short, history has finally caught up with Japan. [995] [995] Satoh, The Odd Couple: Japan and China, the Politics of History and Identity (Japan Institute of International Affairs, 7 August 2006). As a society and culture, Japan has always been at its best when its goals — and the path towards those goals — were set in concrete. But when both the goals and the path need to be adapted to changed circumstances, perhaps even subject to wholesale revision, Japan seems to find the shift inordinately difficult. [996] [996] Interview with Peter Tasker, Tokyo, 8 June 1999. Rather like France, it tends to fiddle and delay until nothing short of a revolution — or, in Japan ’s case, a restoration — is required. In the face of the transformation of East Asia, and above all China, Japan has been effectively paralysed, unable to change direction, offering little other than more of the same. The ruling Liberal Democrats, who have dominated Japanese politics since 1955, have found lateral thinking virtually impossible. [997] [997] Satoh, The Odd Couple . As Chinese East Asian expert Zhu Feng argues: ‘ Japan has been less prepared for the rise of China than any other country. They can’t believe it. They don’t want to believe it. Yet it affects them more than anyone else.’ [998] [998] Interview with Zhu Feng, Beijing, 16 November 2005. For the most part, Japan has gone into denial about the rise of China, wishing that somehow it might go away or that it was perhaps a figment of everyone else’s imagination.