Looking back on East Asian politics in 1994 ...

Looking back on East Asian politics in 1994 ...

The Jakarta Post Asia Correspondent Harvey Stockwin
takes a look backward at the political developments, or lack of
them, during 1994 in the following article. And in another
article below he looks at the prospects in 1995 in the uncertain
arena of international relations.

HONG KONG (JP): The year 1994 was the one in which China stood
still, Japan inched along, Taiwan finally took off, and Korea
looked in danger of slipping back.

China stood still? But surely this was the year when the
Chinese economy continued to take off, and the world's largest
nation in terms of population moved inexorably towards superpower
status?

Perhaps this was so. Yet it is equally relevant to assert that
1994 was just one more year in which, for mysterious and often
irrational reasons, "China fever" once again gripped the Western
world, including Japan. The fever even swayed tough-minded
realists like Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and
Singapore Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew.

The world has been periodically gripped by such spasms for the
last several centuries. In 1994, the World Bank dreamed up a new
way of increasing the size of the Chinese economy by a system of
statistical double-counting. President Bill Clinton abandoned all
thought of pressuring, and even considered visiting, the men he
once referred to as the "Butchers of Beijing". Businessmen
everywhere dreamed of unprecedented profits if only 1.2 billion
Chinese were allowed to buy their products.

The pattern varies but essentially remains the same. No one
now thinks of selling oil lamps to China. But China sees more
profit and advantage in running up a large trade surplus in the
vast and open U.S. market rather than allowing foreigners equally
free and easy access to China's vastness.

As foreign investors rush to place untold billion dollar bets
within China, it surely says something highly significant that
those with wealth in China are trying to place their ill-gotten
or properly-attained gains outside the Middle Kingdom.

Of course the Chinese inside China know full well that all is
uncertain as one personal dynasty within the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) drifts towards its end. They do not have to be told
that China is standing still politically. That is what always
happens when dynasties end.

So, as 90-year-old paramount leader Deng Xiaoping languished,
there was no political reform whatsoever within China, and
precious little economic reform either, a fact underlined at
year's end as China failed to immediately get foundation-member
status in the new World Trade Organization.

True to form the Middle Kingdom had demanded that it be
admitted on its own terms, and, for once, was rebuffed by hard-
headed trade negotiators.

So, amid the continuing political stalemate, the ranks of new
computers bought by China were underutilized or not used at all
because the regime could not possibly allow the free flow of
information on which success in the computer age depends.

The dwindling ranks of Chinese dissidents, at year's end, were
receiving even more severe sentences than those tried in the wake
of the Beijing Massacre. Wei Jinsheng, China's best known
democrat, completed a lengthy sentence awarded for the Tiananmen
Troubles, only to disappear again after daring to meet a U.S.
Assistant Secretary for Human Rights.

Romanticism over China's economic growth meant that no major
world leader even asked the Chinese what they had done with Wei,
leave aside pressured them not to do it.

As China stood still politically, CCP Secretary-general and
Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Prime Minister Li Peng seemed
to take some limited political advantage from the hiatus. They
had clearly demonstrated, after all, that it paid to take a tough
line with foreigners. Amid western and Southeast Asian
appeasement of China, those arguing that China had to make many
of the political and economic changes which foreigners were also
urging, simply had not got a leg to stand on. Their day will
come.

Japan is a country which likes to formally announce the
beginning or the end of things. Bureaucrats in the meteorological
office customarily announce the official end of the rainy season
around June. Usually the rain does not dare to disobey by
returning for a final downpour. This year the Economic Planning
Agency (EPA) announced the official date for the end of the
recession. After the long period of stagnation following the
bursting of the bubble economy, it seemed too soon to be sure
that the economy would comply with the bureaucratic assertion.

So far no Japanese bureaucrat and certainly no politician has
been bold enough to pronounce the Completion of Political Reform
(CPR). Technically the task is complete. It took three prime
ministers to do it but finally a new electoral system plus some
bills on campaign financing were passed by the House of
Representatives. These are supposed to make politicians more
policy-minded, more open in their ways and more capable of taking
charge of the bureaucracy. It is supposed to make politics less
corrupt, less factional and less devious.

Yet the politicians of all parties spent most of the year
inarticulately closeted in smoke-filled back rooms. The
bureaucrats continued to draft speeches and policies, bills and
budgets, and generally obstructed faster, much-needed
deregulation of the Japanese economy since that would diminish
their power base. So hope faded that the long-awaited CPR really
added up to meaningful change.

In mid-year, the reformists first fell out among themselves,
thereby bringing the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)
back to power, though the LDP had to appoint a left-wing
socialist as prime minister in order to accomplish this. By the
time the reformists united to inaugurate a New Frontier Party
(Shinshinto) late in the year, many Japanese voters were
understandably disillusioned. The high peak of hope in mid-1993,
when Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa came to power, had long
since dissipated. The year 1994 gave no real indication when or
if it would be revived.

Everyone assumes that Taiwan has already taken off
economically. This was the year when it did the same politically.
The people at last got a chance to elect the mayors of the two
largest cities --Kaohshiung and Taipei -- and the governor of
Taiwan. Even more important the presidency of the Republic of
China on Taiwan will also be elected on the basis of one-man,
one-vote, as a result of additional reforms instituted by the
government of President Lee Teng-hui during the year.

Taiwan took off in other ways, too. As one of its members was
elected mayor of Taipei, the opposition Democratic Progressive
Party, with its pro-independence stance, previously better known
for its fisticuffs in parliament, gained power and
responsibility. But the long ruling Kuomintang belatedly began to
re-emphasize Taiwan's separate identity along with its commitment
to eventual reunification. This contrary stress has so far
enabled it to retain its grip on power. China naturally detests
the directions in which democracy may lead -- but presumably
appreciates the fact that Taiwan has been using its freedom to
invest heavily on the mainland.

Elsewhere in the region, South Korea continued to move forward
along the democratic path, but the Korean Peninsula threatened to
slip back towards conflict. The American-led plan to bribe North
Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program was put in place --
but whether it will work was left very much in doubt.

Vietnam began to attract the same degree of euphoria which
businessmen have previously directed at China. While the
Philippines and Thailand stuck firmly though not always
productively to the democratic road, Singapore and Malaysia
became even more committed to the authoritarian path. India saw
the first clear electoral signs that the Indian National
Congress's current grip on power was weakening and there were not
lacking those who thought it is time to give a political role to
Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi's widow, hoping once again that
the Nehru Dynasty would restore flagging Congress fortunes.

Altogether it was a year in which East Asia continued to
economically advance but remained politically retarded in many
crucial ways.

Window: 1994 was one more year in which, for mysterious and often
irrational reasons, "China fever" once again gripped the Western
world and parts of Asia.