Impact of Sino-U.S. ties on Japan

Continuing with the fifth in a series of articles on President Bill Clinton's recent visit to China, The Jakarta Post's Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin focuses on the current atmospherics in the triangular relationship between Japan, China and the United States. China's ambition to surpass Japan in American affections became plain, and Clinton conveyed the image of going along with it.

HONG KONG (JP): After the LDP lost 17 seats and won only 44 in the upper house election on July 12, Ryutaro Hashimoto had to write to U.S. President Bill Clinton and cancel his consolation prize -- a state visit to Washington later this month.

Did Clinton, after receiving that message, pause to reflect on the extent to which he may have recently contributed to Hashimoto's downfall, by clearly making Japan, and therefore its Prime Minister, appear less important in American eyes than it actually is, or should be?

As he signed the letter, did Hashimoto stop to wryly blame himself for not firmly insisting that the U.S. President at least stopover in Tokyo, after or before his recent China trip, as his predecessors had done? for not coupling that with a blunt private message that the Prime Minister of Japan did not expect the President of the United States to signal to Japanese voters, in any way, just before an election, that he, Clinton, might have diminished regard for the Japanese leadership?

These questions arise in part because a tiny incident in the Shanghai Library during President Bill Clinton's visit to China spoke volumes about the current state of play in the crucial triangular relationship between the United States, Japan and China.

It rubbed home an essential truth about the present Sino- Japanese-American triangle -- China is aggressively ambitious, already seeing itself as the regional heavyweight, while Clinton is plainly both naive and careless. The Japanese are, as ever, resentful of American slights but remain passively on the defensive, thereby probably adding to their frustrations.

In the Shanghai Library President and Mrs. Clinton were conducting a roundtable discussion with the pretentious title of Shaping China For the 21st Century.

The Clintons seemed to be under the illusion that they were talking to ordinary Chinese academics and professionals, just as, two days earlier Clinton had seemed to assume that random students were asking questions after he spoke at Beijing University.

A reading of both transcripts by anyone reasonably familiar with Chinese methods quickly suggests that both the professionals and the students were obviously chosen by the Chinese authorities for their ability to express, subtly or bluntly, forcefully or politely varying versions of the prevailing communist party line.

Ever the ingratiating professional politician, Clinton asks an American studies specialist, a Professor Wu (the U.S. transcripts provide everything except the full Chinese names), to talk about Sino-American relations plus "what advice you could give us going forward here".

The good Professor Wu, no doubt carefully primed for this moment should it arise, does not miss a trick. He reminds Clinton of the dangerous Taiwan Straits Crisis in 1996 but is generally upbeat, concluding "there is good reason for us (China and the U.S.) to become good friends, not enemies. I think the importance of such relations will overpass that of the U.S.-Japan relations. I am optimistic about that".

Amazingly, Clinton replies "Well, first let me thank you for what you said. I do believe that my coming here and the work we've done in the last two years, President Jiang Zemin's trip to the U.S., has helped resolve some of the misunderstandings".

Clinton then himself becomes the first U.S. President to repeat "three noes", the Chinese party line over Taiwan, something which Presidents from Richard Nixon to George Bush carefully resisted doing, even though Beijing has been consistently insisting upon variations on the three noes theme ever since Nixon's first precedent-setting visit in 1972 .

In their leadership compound in Zhongnanhai, the Chinese must have been rubbing their hands in glee (and amazement) that, in addition to their persistence being rewarded over Taiwan, they had managed to be thanked by an American President for suggesting that Sino-American relations would come first in future, rather than being (as they probably expected) diplomatically contested on this point.

If the President, and his advisers, knew anything about the Chinese style of negotiating, then they would have known that it was imperative that Clinton should have reacted by reminding Professor Wu that while a "strategic partnership" with China is highly important, a continuing alliance with Japan remains a vital U.S. interest.

The Chinese -- whatever may be thought of their policies -- are consummate professionals, absolutely dedicated (as perhaps only a highly authoritarian state can be) to the pursuit of national interest as they perceive it. But sometimes that Chinese pursuit can be exceedingly short- sighted. So it seems to be at the moment, as far as the Sino-Japanese-American triangle is concerned.

The Chinese ambition to try and make Sino-American relations "overpass" the U.S.-Japan alliance was first made absolutely explicit when President Jiang Zemin visited Hawaii during his 1997 visit to the U.S..

Jiang's visit to Pearl Harbor was carefully contrived as a symbolic reminder of the days when China and the U.S. were allies against Japan.

Jiang also then did something which postwar Japanese emperors and prime ministers have, unwisely, refrained from doing -- he placed a wreath at the USS Arizona memorial, over the spot where the battleship was sunk by the Japanese during the first minutes of the surprise attack on Dec. 7 1941.

At first sight, it seems absurd that the Chinese should even think of trying to detach the U.S. from Japan, -- breaking up the U.S.-Japan alliance in order to make it easier for Beijing to deal separately with Tokyo and Washington. To date, China has still to take U.S.-Japanese shared interests and policies into account on a whole range of issues.

At second sight, the idea is not so ridiculous. An incident just before the Clinton visit -- not small, since it involved the U.S. and Japan spending billions of dollars in the foreign exchange markets -- helps explain why this is so.

U.S. Treasury officials, wedded to strong dollar policies, did nothing to help the slumping yen through intervention in the foreign exchange markets.

Since the Hashimoto administration itself couldn't act decisively to reactivate the slumping Japanese economy, it could hardly call upon the U.S. for such market intervention.

As the yen first hit the 140 to 145 yen-to-dollar level last month, the Chinese Minister of Finance and the Central Bank Governor both let it be known that a further weakening of the yen would put pressure on China to devalue the renminbi, despite its pledges not to do so.

Clinton's current passion for appeasing China, though not Japan, immediately surfaced. Clinton did not want a first class financial crisis to disturb his 10-day trip to China. He wanted to avoid another slump in Asia's downward economic spiral.

The U.S., together with Japan, then intervened heavily in the markets and the yen briefly rose -- though it still hovers around 140 to the dollar.

Many have assumed that China had demonstrated its increasing economic clout.

But what had also been illustrated was that no one in the Clinton Administration forcefully reminded China that its devaluation of the renminbi in 1994 had been among the factors triggering the Asian financial crisis in the first place, and that a further deflationary spiral, brought about by another devaluation, could well be ruinous to China's economic and political interests.

The Chinese gambled on displaying their political influence, just before the Clinton visit, and won. The Japanese were left wondering if the U.S. had acted out of concern for Japan, or for China. The Americans, belatedly, were left denying that they had acted because of China, not Japan.

As it happened, it was the second time the U.S. had recently left Japan anxious over America's priorities regarding China -- and the second gamble the Chinese had won.

As the Clinton visit was arranged, the Chinese demanded strict reciprocity. Since President Jiang had visited no other nation when he visited the U.S., Beijing maintained that President Clinton should not visit any other nation when he visited China.

It was a straight divide-and-rule gambit. The Americans fell for it. What Clinton should have said, politely but firmly was "Yes, I understand your position, but you are not a superpower, the U.S. is, and I have to look after my alliances". The Chinese would have respected such a viewpoint. But it was evidently not expressed.

Of course, Hashimoto was invited to Washington in July. Of course, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright went to Tokyo, immediately after the Clinton's China visit was completed, to deliver some bromides in person.

But Clinton himself appeased the Chinese, and flew straight back home. This left the Japanese, who are also adept at realpolitik in their own way, wondering: if the U.S. President could accept Chinese dictation on appropriate U.S.-Japan consultations -- in what other ways would the U.S. forego due respect for the vital interests of an ally?

From another angle, since Hashimoto failed to assert himself, the Japanese government was left looking impotent in foreign policy at a time when it was already being viewed as inept in economic policy. These were factors which undoubtedly affected voters as they went to the polls in the House of Councilors election.

There was deep irony in this. Another prime minister whose (lengthy) tenure was cut short by a combination of American thoughtlessness and Chinese machinations was Eisuke Sato -- Hashimoto's first faction leader when he entered the Diet in 1964.

Too much Japanese anxiety aroused too often in this way would not appear to be in China's best interests. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that if China did succeed in "overpassing" Japan, and ending the U.S.-Japan alliance, there could well be several unfortunate as well as unforeseen consequences not necessarily to China's advantage.

At one extreme, Beijing might awake one day to a far more authoritarian Japan which, beset by profound feelings of insecurity, had found it necessary to follow India down the nuclear path.