Land dispute reanimates China-Japan animosity

Old quarrels take new forms when the world?s power balance shifts. Japanese and Chinese nationalists squaring off over the Diaoyutai Islands (???) in the East China Sea are in the grip of geopolitical rivalries, jockeying for position on the new map that China?s rise has created. Their deeper animosity goes back into the misuse of their troubled, shared history.

When China?s climb out of the economic trough began in the 1990s, the US was the world?s biggest power, Japan the second-biggest economy, and the Soviet empire recently deceased. Today, China is the world?s second-largest economy, Japan has stagnated for two decades and US power looks less impressive than it used to. As China flexes its muscles, the US shift in focus to the Pacific region has come not a minute too soon for some of Beijing?s nervous neighbors.

Asia?s maritime borders, and ownership of the oil and gas beneath the East and South China seas, are disputed between Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea, China and Japan ? but as China grows, so does its unilateral assertion of claims.

Two years ago it announced the South China Sea was a ?core interest,? in an unsuccessful attempt to stick a ?keep out? sign on the dispute for the US to read. Last month, Beijing elevated an island-based military garrison to city status, unilaterally giving it administrative responsibility over the entire South China Sea.

In the East China Sea, things have been equally tense.

In April, Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara provocatively announced a public fund to buy several of the islands from private Japanese citizens. His action embarrassed the government and inflamed Japanese sentiments, provoking a reaction from Chinese nationalists: On Aug. 15, the anniversary of Japan?s 1945 surrender, a group of Chinese citizens landed and raised Chinese flags on the islands. They were swiftly deported to Hong Kong, precipitating the worst anti-Japanese demonstrations since 2004.

The animosity is much older. For centuries China saw Japan as a vassal state and loftily accepted tribute from a people they regarded as inferior. In the 19th century, when Japan cast off its feudal system and modernized, the shock to China was the greater because of its historic contempt. When, in 1894, Japan defeated China militarily, the humiliation was felt across the nation. China set out to learn from Japan?s transformation, but was powerless to prevent Japan?s imperial expansion and brutal occupation. Even after Japan?s defeat in 1945, Japan?s economic success and close relationship with the US perpetuated Chinese resentment.

That Japan is the focus of popular rage in China today is less surprising, given this history, than the fact that until the late 1970s visiting Japanese were greeted in China with professions of friendship. It was only after the Chinese regime sent tanks to crush the Tiananmen democracy movement in 1989 that nationalist animosity became official policy.

In the version of history elaborated after 1989, malign foreigners are China?s enemy and the cause of the century of ?national humiliation? from the 1840s to the founding of the People?s Republic in 1949. China?s ?national humiliation? is now commemorated in scores of freshly built museums and taught to successive generations of school children.

Source: http://libertytimes.feedsportal.com/c/33098/f/535601/s/22b478ec/l/0L0Staipeitimes0N0CNews0Ceditorials0Carchives0C20A120C0A80C250C20A0A3541121/story01.htm

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