World War II continues in problematic E. Asia

Chinese President Jiang Zemin's visit to Japan was supposed to neatly round off a series of East Asian summits between Russia, China and Japan. But while history had been pushed to one side when China and Japan dealt with Russia, our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin reports, it once again intruded when they dealt with each other.

HONG KONG (JP): In the wake of the failure of the Sino- Japanese summit to bridge the historical gulf between the two countries, Tokyo is getting nearly all the blame when Beijing itself was partly responsible for the stand-off.

The Chinese side, after several diplomatic successes, notably with the United States, appears to have been carried away by hubris or its own publicity, or both.

It seems that Chinese President Jiang Zemin's advisers forgot that it is one thing to con an American president distracted both by sexual scandal, and the myth of the huge Chinese market, into a policy of appeasement.

It is something else again to beguile a Japan which -- like China -- has its eyes firmly fixed on the realities of power politics. China may have assumed that, as in 1972, so in 1998 Japan will happily follow where American leads in China relations. But Japan is now much less inclined to do that.

The basic summit failure comes after three successive summits have spotlighted the triangular relationship between Russia, China and Japan.

First, Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi visited Moscow in mid-November where he and ailing Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a joint declaration to build a creative partnership.

Secondly, Jiang Zemin visited Moscow for the sixth recent Sino-Russian summit. Jiang and Yeltsin signed yet another statement on settling border issues, but the overall joint statement for the visit was merely issued.

Then came the Jiang-Obuchi meeting in Tokyo. Even after protracted last-minute negotiations, the two leaders could not agree on a joint statement which both would formally sign -- at a ceremony originally planned to be the highlight of the Jiang visit.

This failure of Japan and China to put history to rest is the more remarkable since, on two sides of the Sino- Russian-Japanese triangle, real efforts are being made to diminish historical discord, in an effort to improve relations.

But since this effort is being accomplished through suppressing historical memories rather than eliminating them through the catharsis of frank dialogue, a return to East Asian discord is still possible.

The Russo-Japanese relationship is a good example. The Russians have long since ceased to assert that they must continue to hold Japan's Northern Territories as revenge for their 1905 defeat in the Russo-Japanese War. That's how Joseph Stalin put it as he annexed the islands adjacent to Hokkaido in 1946. Of course, nationalists still aver that Russia's sovereign territory cannot be reduced or given away.

More important, Japan is no longer insisting that those Northern Territories must be returned before there can be any real progress in Japanese-Russian relations.

Flexibility has replaced rigidity -- as when Japan suggests that Russia can continue to administer the islands even if the Russo-Japanese border, north of the Northern Territories, reverts to the one agreed in 1855.

The Russians have already agreed that former Japanese residents of the islands can now visit them freely. The two sides will also be talking about joint efforts to improve the Northern Territories economy.

But there are still plenty of ways in which accord may prove elusive. As between China and Japan, so between Russia and Japan -- World War II is most definitely still not over.

But the Cold War ice north of Hokkaido is melting. It is almost as if both Tokyo and Moscow have come to the recognition that past rigidity towards each other only gave Beijing the advantage in the triangular play.

Historical memories are also being pushed into the background in Sino-Russian relations. The tensions that came so close to the surface in the bad old days of Sino- Soviet rivalry and border skirmishes have seemingly withered away.

Moscow and Beijing tell foreigners that the border question has now been solved. But neither China nor Russia release the full texts of the successive border agreements that they keep on signing.

In fact the border issue has not been solved. It is just that China is no longer making an issue of the few border disputes that resist easy or quick resolution.

Bear Island is the best example. It is a sizable island lying opposite the Russian Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk, not far from the confluence of the Ussuri and Amur rivers.

One key Russo-Chinese border dispute has hinged on the exact position of the thalweg, the median line between the Russian and Chinese banks of the rivers. Under Leonid Brezhnev the median line was asserted to be on the Chinese bank, meaning that all the little islands on the Ussuri river came under Soviet sovereignty.

Under Boris Yeltsin, the median line has returned to the middle of the river, and several uninhabited islands have returned to China along with it. But Bear Island, which is adjacent to the Chinese bank of the river, is not merely home to the Russian residents of Khabarovsk. It also occupies a strategic position in relation to the Russian city.

Brezhnev tried to get around this problem by saying that the median line lay not down the main river but in the narrow stream which separates Bear Island from the Chinese bank.

Yeltsin's negotiators have probably dropped this pretense, in return for which the Chinese side appears to have dropped its insistence that Bear Island be quickly reunited with the motherland.

Elsewhere along the border, military forces are being decreased while border trade tends to increase. Moscow even permits the temporary immigration of Chinese laborers into Siberia, a development not always appreciated by local Russians.

So why is it that Japan and China are both being pragmatic about their nationalism in relation to Russia when they are asserting their respective nationalisms against each other -- China by demanding an all-encompassing World War II apology, Japan by refusing to give it.

Obviously there are complex reasons, but one shared motive stands out. Both Japan and China seek to take advantage of current Russian weakness.

For the Japanese the tantalizing though unspoken question must be -- will current dire Russian economic weakness make Moscow more willing to be pragmatic, and return to the 1855 border treaty, if the price is right?

Already sizable sums are being mentioned as possibly accompanying the successful conclusion of a Russo-Japanese Peace Treaty by the year 2000, as has been formally promised in the signed Obuchi-Yeltsin joint declaration.

For the Chinese, the tantalizing though unspoken question must be -- will current dire Russian economic weakness make Moscow more willing to sell sophisticated high-tech weaponry or know-how to a China anxious to take shortcuts on its otherwise slow road to superpower status?

Of course, the Russians may become economically so desperate that they will choose both the Japanese and the Chinese option. But with China, Moscow has to calculate that geopolitical realities do not change, however much history is suppressed, and that weapons provided today may unnecessarily increase the potential longterm Chinese threat to Russian territorial integrity.

With Japan, Moscow can assume that the longterm threat potential is much less acute, especially if the Northern Territories issue is got out of the way.

In Kuala Lumpur at the APEC summit, U.S. Vice President Al Gore told Russian Prime Minister Yvgeny Primakov that there would be no Brazil-like funding for Russia if it held to its current economic course. Earlier, German leaders have delivered a similar message to Moscow. So Moscow either has to change its current economic drift away from a free market economy, or rely more on Japan -- a nation that shares the present Russian government's preference for state-assisted capitalism.