China / Japan Crisis Indicates US Importance in East Asia

For the last several years, one big theme has dominated talk of the future of Asia:

As China rises, its neighbors are being inevitably drawn into its orbit, currying favor with the region’s new hegemonic power.

The presumed loser, of course, is the United States,

whose wealth and influence are being spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

and whose economic troubles have eroded its standing in a more dynamic Asia,

For the last several years, one big theme has dominated talk of the future of Asia:

As China rises, its neighbors are being inevitably drawn into its orbit, currying favor with the region’s new hegemonic power.

The presumed loser, of course, is the United States,

whose wealth and influence are being spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

and whose economic troubles have eroded its standing in a more dynamic Asia,

as we pointed out in the beginning of our recent Feature on the China / Japan confrontation.

Fortunately, it looks as if the most recent crisis between China and Japan is being resolved not just peacefully,

but in a way that will make it possible for the two countries to continue their burgeoning economic relationship,

both in general and with regard to the delicate negotiations surrounding the natural gas fields in which the bizarre events sparking the crisis took place.

That said, rising frictions between China and its neighbors in recent weeks over security issues

have handed the United States an opportunity to reassert itself —

one the Obama administration has been keen to take advantage of.

 

Asian countries suspicious of Chinese intentions see Washington as a natural ally.

Washington is leaping into the middle of heated territorial disputes between China and Southeast Asian nations,

which may or may not be the smartest way to handle these situations,

despite stern Chinese warnings that it mind its own business.

The United States is carrying out naval exercises with South Korea in order to help Seoul rebuff threats from North Korea

even though China is denouncing those exercises, saying that they intrude on areas where the Chinese military operates.

Meanwhile, China’s now hopefully resolved dispute with Japan over a Chinese fishing trawler captured by Japanese ships in disputed waters

is pushing Japan back under the American security umbrella,

a movement that will continue even with the peaceful resolution of the crisis.

“The U.S. has been smart,” said Carlyle A. Thayer, a professor at the Australian Defense Force Academy who studies security issues in Asia.

“It has done well by coming to the assistance of countries in the region.”

“All across the board, China is seeing the atmospherics change tremendously,” he added.

“The idea of the China threat, thanks to its own efforts, is being revived.”

Asserting Chinese sovereignty over borderlands in contention — everywhere from Tibet to Taiwan to the South China Sea —

has long been the top priority for Chinese nationalists, an obsession that overrides all other concerns,

again, as we pointed out in our piece on the now-hopefully-peacefully-resolved China / Japan imbroglio.

But this complicates China’s attempts to present the country’s rise as a boon for the whole region

and creates wedges between China and its neighbors.

Nothing underscores that better than the escalating diplomatic conflict between China and Japan over the detention of the Chinese fishing captain, Zhan Qixiong, by the Japanese authorities,

who say the captain rammed two Japanese vessels around the Senkaku or Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea.

The islands are administered by Japan but claimed by both Japan and China.

The current dispute may strengthen the military alliance between the United States and Japan,

as did an incident last April when a Chinese helicopter buzzed a Japanese destroyer.

Such confrontations tend to remind Japanese officials, who have suggested that they need to refocus their foreign policy on China instead of America,

that they rely on the United States to balance an unpredictable China, analysts say.

“Japan will have no choice but to further go into America’s arms, to further beef up the U.S.-Japan alliance and its military power,”

said Huang Jing, a scholar of the Chinese military at the National University of Singapore.

In July, Southeast Asian nations, particularly Vietnam, applauded when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that

the United States was willing to help mediate a solution to disputes that those nations had with China over the South China Sea,

which is rich in oil, natural gas and fish.

China insists on dealing with Southeast Asian nations one on one, but Mrs. Clinton said the United States supported multilateral talks.

Freedom of navigation in the sea is an American national interest, she said.

China has also been objecting to American plans to hold military exercises with South Korea in the Yellow Sea,

which China claims as its exclusive military operations zone.

The United States and South Korea want to send a stern message to North Korea

over what Seoul says was the torpedoing last March of a South Korean warship by a North Korean submarine.

China’s belligerence serves only to reinforce South Korea’s dependence on the American military.

American officials are increasingly concerned about the modernization of China’s navy and its long-range abilities,

as well as China’s growing assertiveness in the surrounding waters.

In March, a Chinese official told White House officials that the South China Sea was part of China’s “core interest” of sovereignty, similar to Tibet and Taiwan,

an American official said in an interview at the time.

American officials also object to China’s telling foreign oil companies not to work with Vietnam on developing oil fields in the South China Sea.

Some Chinese military leaders and analysts see an American effort to contain China.

Feng Zhaokui, a Japan scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said in an article on Tuesday in The Global Times, a populist newspaper,

that the United States was trying to “nurture a coalition against China.”

In August, Rear Adm. Yang Yi wrote an editorial for The PLA Daily, published by the Chinese Army, in which he said that

on one hand, Washington “wants China to play a role in regional security issues.”

“On the other hand,” he continued, “it is engaging in an increasingly tight encirclement of China and is constantly challenging China’s core interests.”

In April, the incident involving the Chinese helicopter and Japanese destroyer spooked many in Japan,

making them feel vulnerable at a time when Yukio Hatoyama, then the prime minister, had angered Washington

with his pledges to relocate a Marine Corps air base away from Okinawa.

His successor, Mr. Kan, has sought to smooth out ties with Washington and

has emphasized that the alliance is the cornerstone of Japanese foreign policy.

“Insecurity about China’s presence has served as a wake-up call on the importance of the alliance,”

said Fumiaki Kubo, a professor of public policy at the University of Tokyo in this article from the New York Times.