Japan-China COLD WAR 6 / After policy shift, China puts ‘core interests’ to forefront
The Yomiuri Shimbun
The Yomiuri ShimbunThis is the sixth installment of a series on the worsening relations between Japan and China.
China’s National Language Resource and Monitoring and Research has selected “zheng” (fight, dispute) as the international character of the year for 2013.
China has recently applied relentless political and economic pressure on countries that pose a threat to its interests, and has adopted the term “core interests” to describe national interests on which it absolutely refuses to seek a compromise. In an international order that has seen U.S. clout waning since the 2008 global financial crisis, China has had no qualms about resorting to high-handed tactics over Japan’s Senkaku Islands and disputes in the South China Sea, as seen in a number of recent high-profile incidents.
In the case of the Senkakus, China has made one attempt after another to change the status quo, in which Japan effectively controls the islands. China has allowed government ships to violate Japanese territorial waters, and permitted a prop-driven plane of the country’s State Oceanic Administration to violate Japan’s airspace in December 2012. Last January, a Chinese Navy frigate locked its weapons-control radar onto a Maritime Self-Defense Force vessel, and in November, China unilaterally declared an air defense identification zone.
Before 2008, China made limited use of the term “core interests” and that was generally in reference to Taiwan, Tibet and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. In recent years, however, the country has applied the term to new domains, including the Senkaku Islands and the South China Sea. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying made it clear that the Diaoyu Islands, China’s name for the Senkakus, were among China’s “core interests” at a press conference in April 2013.
Behind this expansion of core interests is “a change in the direction of long-term diplomacy by the previous Chinese administration of President Hu Jintao,” according to an analysis by Jun Osawa, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Policy Studies.
Chinese diplomatic policies before the change were reminiscent of a classical Chinese saying that means “wait for the right opportunity, and sharpen your claws.” On the diplomatic front, China gave priority to economic development by avoiding friction with foreign countries.
In July 2009, however, Hu set out a policy of “what must be done must be done proactively” at a conference that brought together government officials in charge of diplomacy and Chinese ambassadors. It was a signal that China no longer worries about launching disputes with other nations.
According to Osawa, the number of time “core interests” appeared in the People’s Daily, an organ of the Chinese Communist Party, drastically increased around that time.
Masayuki Masuda, a senior fellow at the National Institute for Defense Studies, said, “China shows absolutely no compunction [in acting] toward another country when it feels the balance of power between the two has shifted to its side, Japan being a case in point.”
This policy change was carried on by the current Chinese president, Xi Jinping. Under slogan of his “Chinese dream,” Xi seems to be adopting a harder line on territory and marine interests than his predecessor.
“Chinese dream” refers to “a return to glory for the ethnic Chinese,” according to Shin Kawashima, an associate professor of the University of Tokyo. “They feel strongly that territories that had belonged to China in the Qing dynasty have been purloined. They see the reclamation of the East and South China seas, among other territories, as part of the grand saga to take back what was stolen,” Kawashima said.
A high-ranking Chinese official emerging from a meeting between U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Xi last December, commented to reporters on China’s hard-line stances, including the declaration of an air defense identification zone in the East China Sea. The positions, the official said, are part of long-term endeavors to protect China’s sovereignty and territory, adding that Xi personally cares strongly about such core interests.
Pressure over Tibet
Japan has been resisting Chinese pressure over Tibet, one of the many issues Beijing has described as a core interest. The Japanese government has been permitting annual visits to Japan by the 14th Dalai Lama, the supreme leader of Tibetan Buddhism, since 2005.
On Nov. 20 last year, the leader addressed a nonpartisan group of 64 lawmakers at a hall in the House of Councillors members’ office building. The Dalai Lama has been urging the world to solve a myriad of problems including some caused by China, such as religious repression and ethnic discrimination in Tibet. The lecture took place despite the Chinese government’s denouncement of Dalai Lama as an “ethnic separatist.”
Although Japanese government officials did not meet with him, Education, Culture, Sports and Science and Technology Minister Hakubun Shimomura attended the lecture.
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