Chinese Fishing Boat, Your Coast Guard; Welcome to the Club, ROK

Sorry I haven’t responded to comments on the Senkaku issue, but is this (highly unsuccessful) ramming of a South Korean Coast Guard vessel by a Chinese fishing boat Chinese government subterfuge, a copycat incident, gangster-like behavior by a historically rowdy occupational category, or a symptom of a larger Chinese breakdown in civility, most prominently evidenced in the tens of thousands of violent protests on the mainland?

Case against Coast Guard Officer Not Air-Tight

More bad news for the Kan administration, according to the evening edition of the hardcopy Yomiuri. My translation, plus comments.

Katsuyuki Nishikawa, the Director-General of the Criminal Bureau of the Ministry of Justice testified in the Judiciary Committee of the House of Councilors regarding the leak of the video of the Chinese fishing boat collision*, “We are not treating [the leaked video] as documents or articles of evidence, but since we received it as material for investigation, it will obviously a document related to a trial as prescribed in (the Code of Criminal Procedure,) Article 47.”

The Code of Criminal Procedure, Article 47 stipulates, “No document relating to the trial shall be made public prior to the commencement of the trial” unless “it is necessary for the public interest or other reasons” [and this testimony] expresses the view that it is strongly suspected that the leak is a violation of the National Public Service Act (obligation to preserve secrecy).

This testimony exposes two problems. First, it could be argued that it is no longer a document related to a trial. The Chinese captain was released under reservation of disposition, which means that as a matter of pure logic, he could still be charged and brought to trial. However, because of the political considerations explicitly stated by the public prosecutors in Okinawa on his release to the Chinese authorities with the obvious understanding that he would be returned to China, where he would be placed beyond the long arm of Japanese law, there is good reason to believe that the Public Prosecutors Office has given up any possibility of prosecuting him at any point in the future. Hence, no trial for the document to be “relating to” pending “commencement of the trial.”

Second, the document can be made public without violating Article 47 “if it is necessary for the public interest or other reasons.” Now I’ve used the quasi-official translation here, but “necessary” does not extend to “other reasons” in the Japanese text. In other words, if there is a valid reason for the disclosure, or rather, a valid reason not to apply the Article 47 restriction to a case of disclosure, then it could be a “document relating to [a] trial” and still not be prosecutable. And what better “other reasons” could there be than the fact that there is no longer a real possibility of a trial?

Note also that a criminal prosecution is a serious encroachment by the state on the individual. There is also the public’s right to know. These are good reasons for the Public Prosecutors Office to exercise restraint in actually proceeding with the case, and the courts are likely to take them into consideration in taking up my two preceding points.

I don’t know if the courts will accept all of these arguments, but don’t you think they’re pretty sound? At a minimum, unless the Coast Guard officer is willing to do the Japanese version of nolo contendere, his lawyers will surely raise them, and his Coast Guard colleagues and retired officers as well as volunteer groups politically motivated or otherwise are sure to pitch in financially for the legal ordeal.

My point is that the Kan administration is looking at a prolonged legal battle that it has little control over but will become intimately tied to in part because of Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku’s intemperate and misguided statement equating it with the monstrosity of evidence tampering by a public prosecutor to buttress a weak case and subsequent alleged cover-up by his superiors. And that is bad. Ex-Prime Minister Hatoyama’s similarly bombastic and erroneous description of an administrative coup d’état hasn’t helped either.

To Conspiracy Theorists: Need a House?

I’ve consistently maintained that there was no conspiracy and that it was a rogue Coast Guard officer, not anyone from the Public Prosecutors Office, and it looks increasingly like it. In fact, I'll bet the house that it’s not an institutional operation. At most, one accomplice, who slipped him the video. Of course the DPJ is trying to dump it all on the Coast Guard, and as an administrative issue, it's right, there's absolutely no way new MLIT Minister Mabuchi can be held responsible for it—or for that matter his predecessor and now Foreign Affairs Minister Seiji Maehara—unless his predecessors are willing to share the blame for decades of neglect that allowed the Coast Guard to operate with such carelessness that an officer in Kobe could get hold of an unauthorized copy.

You know, there’s something to be said for the complaint that I often hear from John Campbell, Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, who now resides in Tokyo, that the LDP continues to spit at the heavens (my words, not his) and the media is giving it a free ride. But is there an anti-DPJ bias? Stephen Reid at Chuo University also has something to say about that. I’m not so sure about that though. I’m inclined to look at all the other factors that go into the bad press for the incumbents and the neglect towards the opposition, though it’s certainly something that should be explored systematically—if someone isn’t already doing it.

Why the DPJ Claims about the Leak Are So Wrong and My Fears over a Weakened Kan Administration

Far less coherent than I’d thought when I wrote it as an email, so I’ve edited it extensively. Still not completely sound, but life is short, so here it is.

The video leak is a serious problem for the Kan administration, but there’s more than this and they are accumulating on Chief Cabinet Secretary (CCS) Yoshito Sengoku’s doorsteps. In this particular instant, making the legally unsound statement that equated it with a group of public prosecutors allegedly involved in the fabrication of evidence to buttress a weak criminal charge and the subsequent cover-up when the fabrication came to light in an attempt to put all the blame on the bureaucracy—which, ironically, it mostly should properly be placed—is going to backfire on him. He has a tendency to wing it in the spotlight—which is really not what the CCS should be doing, though I can't blame him much, given that Kan has turned out not to be a good communicator as prime minister, which fact has been a surprise to me—and have to walk it back, apologize, bluff his way though, whatever. That’s not good. Now let’s look at how his statement is ill-considered.

A) One is a criminal offense by an agent of the state against an individual, while the other is a piece of administrative malfeasance and only possibly a criminal offense by an agent of the state against the state. The latter can, yes, go all the way up to insurrection, but I'm sure that a leak that has little practical effect than to confirm the allegations of the Japanese government pales in comparison to an attempt to sustain an unsound indictment by tampering with the evidence (and entrap the defendant), casting a heavy pall on the entire prosecution process.

B) The evident contrast between the politically motivated release of the Chinese fisherman and the harsh treatment of the Japanese Coast Guard officer, assuming that the officer is indicted, will be all too painful, while the Kan administration will look utterly foolish if the official is not.

C) My guess is that the video was passed around among the officers like a Paris Hilton home movie, and the guy in Kobe got so mad that he went and posted his copy on YouTube. That, Mr. Hatoyama, is administrative failure, not a coup. (Yes, ex-Prime Minister called it a “coup d’état by members of the government.” And ex-MIAC Minister Kazuhiro Haraguchi used the word “insurrection against the state.”

Okay, C) is more of an aside, but my point is that bombastic misstatements from Hatoyama, Sengoku and the like indicate how seriously the DPJ is taking this as a threat to the long-term survival of the DPJ regime. This and Ozawa's lie-in—refusal to testify in the Diet—are playing havoc with the legislative schedule in this extraordinary session as well as with public opinion*, and jeopardizing prospects of expanding alliances, most plausibly with Komeito. Meanwhile, Kamei is yapping about the Japan Post and worker dispatching agency bills. Ozawa is likely to continue to dig in, so that issue will linger well into the regular Diet session, which overlaps with the consolidated local elections in April. As a Japanese voter, I'm beginning to worry that Kan will be too weakened to push the debates on consumption taxation and Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, facing down opponents with the threat of a snap election if necessary.

* The near-universal public outcry in Japan reminds me albeit in very low-key form of the way Kim Jong Il’s revelations over the abductees blew up in Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s face (though to be fair, he showed a remarkable stick-to-it-iveness through his second trip to North Korea and beyond).

Impressed by William D. O’Neill’s Commentary on Senkaku Collision

There must be more than enough opinions from the informed, less informed, uninformed, and of course the ill-informed to last a lifetime of reading. There’s one that’s really impressed me, though, and it’s this one from William D. O’Neill explaining that the Chinese fishing boat initiated the collisions. Now I have no way of verifying (or refuting for that matter) his claims except to turn to another nautical expert (and the claim-counterclaim may not be of that much importance to people who think that the islands belong to China and that’s all there is to it), but a forensic, if cursory, examination from someone who’s been there, done that, is a welcome addition to a debate that has been overwhelmingly dominated by social science and lawyer types—like me. It’s a breath of fresh air, really.

That said, I will soon inflict on you some of my ruminations on the subject that I don’t see reflected out there, at least as far as I’m aware. They are my comments in discussions with my friends at Eurasia Group—social science types, most of them—lightly edited for public consumption.

Just for Fun, Trivia of Sorts around the Senkaku Incident

The search for The Source begins. In the meantime, an edited version of a memo that I sent out in response to suspicions of a high-level, politically motivated leak to my Asia practice friends at Eurasia Group that will never find its way to its clients:

This Jiji Tsushin wire, which identifies the video as a version edited by the Japan Coast Guard station in Ishigaki and this Sankei report, conjointly support my conjecture that a relatively junior JCG official engineered the leak. FYI, I happened to receive a secondhand report on the JCG dismay just after the Chinese boat captain's release by the public prosecutors. The prosecutors have always been at odds with the regular police. Now, they and the Kan administration have managed to piss off the Coast Guard.

There’s an important lesson here for the Chinese authorities.

Hu’s Coming to Dinner?

Yes, he will. At least that’s what I think. There’s been much speculation in Japan whether Hu Jintao, the Chinese President, will actually show up to sup with his fellow heads of state and government at the upcoming APEC summit in Yokohama. The last-minute unilateral cancellation of a meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit between Prime Ministers Naoto Kan and Wen Jiabao by the Chinese side—accompanied by a tirade from the Chinese Foreign Deputy Minister—had put the matter in further doubt. The Japanese authorities pointed out that a key part of the denunciation—the last straw if you will—was the result of an erroneous AFP report*. On the heels of this dust-up, though, Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara, for whom the Chinese netizens appear to harbor particular enmity, announced that the two prime ministers had indeed subsequently held a ten minute chat, where Wen reportedly expressed his regret that their meeting had to be canceled. I wondered how that story would be carried in the Chinese media. Now, I know. Yesterday (Sunday, Oct. 31), the answer came in 法制晩報 (Evening Legal Report: my translation), one of many semi-official publications operating out of Beijing, according to Damien Ma** at Eurasia Group. The Evening Legal Report, according to a Kyodo Tsushin wire by way of among others the Sankei, gave a matter-of-fact report of a ten-minute meeting and characterized it as a “coincidental” “reenactment of corridor diplomacy.” It does not appear to have referred to the Japanese claim about Wen’s regrets. In the meantime, the Chinese side appears to be putting the blame on attempts by national security conservative Foreign Minister Maehara and other hawkish elements in the Kan administration to repair the damage under the Hatoyama administration to the Japan-US bilateral relationship, according to the somewhat more authoritative—am I right, Damien?—環球時報 (Global Times) indicated today (Nov.1) in a bylined report.

Leaving aside guesswork on Chinese motives, I think that the first report is a sign that the Chinese authorities want to limit their reputation risk abroad while containing discontent at home—the demonstrations have all occurred in the less prosperous interior provinces (and Chongqing, a special city in the interior), the most recent ones spilling over into domestic complaints—which means that Hu will show, the only suspense surrounding the status of a bilateral that should take place on the sidelines. The second report? A reminder that the US is the other big dog in the neighborhood, as well as possibly a manifestation of the Chinese authorities’ desire to localize if not completely isolate in the minds of the Chinese public the undesired elements of the Japanese political establishment. There is no mention of the near-universal if low-key Japanese aversion to Chinese actions around the latest Senkaku incdident***.

(Addendum) More to the point, this Global Times editorial puts the blame squarely on Maehara’s shoulders. Note also that Maehara has risen to the top of the preferred politicians in Japan according to the latest Nikkei-TV Tokyo public opinion poll. I don’t think that this is a delayed recognition for his JAL bankruptcy workout efforts, or his less commendable work on the Yamba Dam project.

* Is it just me, or is AFP generally less reliable than, say, Reuters?

** Damien, you will remember, blogs at the Atlantic website, a considerably more prestigious piece of virtual real estate than my more modest efforts. Little known fact: Damien played lead guitar for Johnny Cash’s studio recordings in the country legend’s last years. He is also quickly becoming an authority on rare earth elements. True story.

*** The Chinese belligerence took the Japanese public by surprise and captured its attention in a way that reminded me of the national response to the revelations of the North Korean abduction of Japanese citizen albeit in a much more low-key way. So many people in Japan, including those who had shown little to no interest in Japan’s international relations, or politics for that matter, woke up and took note.

Let’s Hope Mr. Fukuyama Has Worked Out His Announcement with His Chinese Counterpart

According to this Sankei report, Prime Ministers Kan and Wen did have a chat around the ASEAN summitries in Hanoi after all. Tetsuro Fukuyama, the Japanese Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary, the two prime ministers held a ten minute chat in the waiting room for heads of state/government this morning (October 30), less than 24 hours after the Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Hu Zhengyue unilaterally announced that China was cancelling the eagerly awaited post-Senkaku bilateral meeting between the two and delivered a blistering tirade against the most recent Japanese actions surrounding the Senkaku Islands and the South China Sea gas fields. Fukuyama reportedly told the media that the two heads of government shared a common understanding that they:

a) regret that the summit meeting did not occur this time;
b) appreciate the resumption of the private sector exchange between Japan and China;
c) will strive to promote the strategic mutually beneficial relationship; and
d) will create an opportunity in the future to talk at their leisure.

I hope that Fukuyama has worked out his latest statement with his Chinese counterpart—the Japanese announcement of the bilateral meeting reportedly was marred by conflicting reports by government officials about a Chinese cancellation, which turned out to be true—so that it will not be followed yet another dressing-down by the Chinese deputy foreign minister or worse. After all, Wen (if, yet again, reports are to be believed) is under some pressure from hardliners for his more conciliatory policy regarding China’s relations with Japan. To look at this from a different angle, if Fukuyama is not directly contradicted by the Chinese authorities, that would be strong indication that the fix is in, and that the Chinese authorities are really serious about rapprochement.

Note that the Chinese gripe about the gas field announcement appears to have been the result of an erroneous AFP wire that was subsequently corrected after a Japanese MOFA protest. Does this give enough wiggle room to Wen? Hard to believe; it sounds too trivial. But you never know. It’s certainly not encouraging to know that the Chinese side didn’t bother to confirm the wire service report before acting.

So Much for the Fourth International…

The Japanese Communist Party has come out with its official response to the Senkaku Islands incident, and you only need to know the title of the document to understand where the JCP’s sentiments lie:

The Senkaku Islands Issue: Japan Territorial Possession Is Justified Both Historically and Under International Law[so there!]

So I guess my question is: Will Sapio print the document word for word?*

Oh well, so much for the Fourth International.

Yes, I’m aware that the fraternal animosity goes back some ways. That said, note also that the subtitle of the latest JCP outburst contains the word 大義, or “Noble Cause,” a word with historic resonance, a word that reminds me of the less democratic times of the period after the Meiji Restoration and the unconditional surrender in WW II. The appeal to nationalism draws an interesting parallel to China’s more elaborate and effective efforts.

* According to Sankei, in what must be a first for the conservative news group to approvingly reference the JCP, the JCP is going to translate its statement and pass out copies to the foreign embassies in Tokyo.

The Chinese and Japanese Authorities Want to Wind It Down, but Democracy Gets in the Way

In a clear sign that the Chinese leadership wants to move on from the Senkaku Islands incident, China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman has been toning down the rhetoric dramatically in recent days. It appears to be sending signals on the domestic front to cease and desist, too, as anecdotes surface of the Chinese bureaucracy resuming work on shipment papers for rare earth exports to Japan and dropping some of the administrative nuisance imposed on Japanese businesses in China exporting to Japan. In fact, the Japanese Coast Guard folks are the good guys, did you know, helping save sick Chinese sailors, according to this reportfrom Xinhua, China’s state wire service.

The feeling is mutual at the leadership level; the Kan administration also wants to get this issue out of the way before the fallout worsens. However, in Japan, public opinion in general, most of the mainstream media, much of the political opposition, and even some DPJ members are driving driving the domestic political cycle in the opposite direction. You have not, will not, see the kind of government action and very little of the private sector bandwagonning that was evident in China, but the issue will remain in the public domain for a while, not when, for instance, the latest Yomiuri opinion poll (October 1-3) is showing overwhelming negatives for China and the Kan administration around the issue and support for the Kan administration fell from the post-Ozawa euphoria of 66% (September 17-18) to a still above-the-waterline 53%. It’ll be a while before the two sides can kiss, discreetly at first, and make up, as they eventually will—until the next flare-up.

Coming Up for Air after My First PowerPoint Production

Not very fun weekend, as I have just finished (hopefully) my first PowerPoint for presentation, on Tuesday…on a webcast. It’s in ugly black-and-white—except the tables, which the software automatically colored my tables and I couldn’t figure out how to turn that function off. Two days, in fact, which brings the hourly rate for the speaking fee to… wait, I’m not going to let the thought spoil my after-work hours, when I’m getting my drink on and then breaking off to cook dinner. In fact, I’ll probably won’t even be going back to my most recent posts until after I’ve made the presentation; there’s other work when the weekday dawns too.

That said, I can’t help mentioning how godawful the Kan administration’s response to the Senkaku Islands crisis was. No, I couldn’t have done any better—I am the last person that you want to turn to for crisis management (just ask my old METI friends)—but would you believe me, I actually foresaw a similar issue there and featured it in a piece of work that I was doing some time back? And you’d think that the government would have had a crisis management plan in place for such contingencies, don’t you?

Never mind, let’s see if an emboldened Chinese government sees fit to actively challenge Japan’s effective control over the islands. I think that this has emerged as a real, if still small, possibility.

I’m signing off for the day. I generally check my email, even when I’m dead drunk, so that’s where to find me if you’re in a hurry, okay?

Is Anybody Watching Straight Talk Tomorrow?

On CNBC, at 7:30PM Tokyo Time? Just sayin’.

Okay, back to my deadline work, for multiple clients. And liquor. There’s always liquor.

Chinese Authorities Escalate and My Dialogue with Sun Bin Continues

The Chinese government made front-page headline news in Japan as it upped the ante on the Japanese government’s refusal to give up the fishing boat captain without a trial, announcing its unilateral suspension of ministerial-level exchanges, suspension of bilateral consultations on increasing airline routes between Japan and China, and postponement of the Japan-China Comprehensive Conference concerning Coal. It has already postponed scheduled high-level talks on the joint development of the East China gas fields and the dispatch of a National People’s Congress delegation.

By going public with these measures and accompanying them with belligerent language, the Chinese government is making it even more impractical politically for the Japanese government to coax the Public Prosecutors Office to give up the fishing boat captain without taking the criminal case to court, as it is in the PPO’s discretion to do (somewhat adulterated by a legal amendment that allows the Committee of Inquest for Prosecution the authority to force prosecution against the PPO’s will, but this is irrelevant for all practical purposes in this case).

The saving grace here is that the Chinese side is not taking any action to challenge the effective control itself of the territorial waters by the Japanese government. It actually appears to be keeping Chinese vessels from launching expeditions to the Senkakus. Also significantly, as Sun Bin notes in our ongoing dialogue, criminal prosecution sets precedence of a legal shading, an undesirable development from the Chinese perspective, at least in the court of public opinion.

Anybody Still Interested in the Chinese Fishing Boat?

If so, there is a dialogue between Sun Bin and me in the comments here that you might want to look into.

Diplomatic Process Enters Home Stretch on Chinese Fishing Boat and Crew

“State Councillor Dai Bingguo Urgently Summons Japanese Ambassador to China regarding Japan’s Illegal Seizure of Chinese Fishing Boat in the Waters around Diaoyu Islands” was the September 12 headline news item on the Chinese Foreign Ministry Website. Let me try my hand at a translation of the rest of the Chinese MOFA post:

In the pre-dawn hours of September 12*, State Councillor Dai Bingguo urgently summoned Uichiro Niwa, Japanese Ambassador to China, regarding the illegal seizure of a Chinese fishing boat and its crew in the waters around the Diaoyu Islands, gravely expressed the Chinese government’s serious concern and stringent position, and urged the Japanese side not to misjudge the situation but to make a wise political decision and immediately return the Chinese fishermen and fishing boat.

Ambassador Niwa stated that he would take this Chinese position and report it immediately and accurately to his home government**.

On one hand, the Chinese message contained nothing new: there were no or-else threats, and the Chinese challenge of the legality of the “seizure” was included in the post but not in Dao’s comments. On the other hand, a past-midnight summons to an ambassador plenipotentiary seemed pretty heavyhanded. And with the extraordinary State Councillor card now on the table, the only recourse left to the Chinese authorities would be a Wen (but heavens not Hu)-to-Kan hotline call.

The events of today (September 13) show that the fix indeed was in. The crew (but not the captain) returned to China on an aircraft chartered by the Chinese side and flight arrangements obviously expedited, perfectly legal and according to Japanese criminal procedure law; the Japanese authorities expressed their displeasure at the insult of the late-night summons; and the Chinese MOFA spokeswoman—why do I think that we have heard the last of the State Councillor?—demanded the release of the captain. The Japanese legal process will most likely grind on. How about a plea of guilty from the Chinese captain including an expression of remorse—to be retracted immediately on his return to China?—for not showing proper civility to the Japanese authorities while avoiding any explicit recognition of Japanese sovereignty over the Senkakus, a request from the Public Prosecutors Office for a suspended sentence expeditiously granted by the bench, and deportation as soon as the deadline for appeals passes?

A question lingers in my mind though. I might be imagining things, but these maritime incidents seem to be occurring just as the DPJ is having problems managing the Japan-Us relationship. It’s as if they were designed to drive Japan back into Uncle Sam’s arms when the DPJ leadership might—just might—have been inclined to turn more decisively towards China’s way. I would not have these thoughts but for parallel reports of the verbal altercation between Japanese and Chinese research vessels this side of the EEZ median line (this Sankei report predictably being the most alarmist among them). If there’s a fatal accident, or an exchange of fire between a Chinese research/observation vessel and a Japanese Coast Guard vessel, all bets are off.

* The first online MSM report in Japan came from ASAHI, with a 3:48AM byline (most likely following an immediate briefing for the Japanese media by the Ambassador or his spokesman), so it was more of a post-midnight summons. More significant, of course, is that this fourth summons came from the State Councillor in charge of foreign policy.

** If anyone is wondering, Ambassador Niwa talked back to the State Councillor to the effect that Japan remained unchanged in its position regarding the legal status of the Senkakus and that it would properly deal with the incident according to Japanese law, according to the Japanese media—which fact, if true, the Chinese MOFA chose to ignore in its press release.

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This AP wire had the most useful factual account of the facts as of this posting. I want to flag that.

China Finds a Dodge from the Senkaku Incident (I Think)

RS: Some warm-up exercises for the real thing.

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On September 7, a Japanese Coast Guard patrol boat tried to board and inspect a Chinese fishing boat in the territorial waters around the Senkaku (Diaoyu to China and Taiwan) Islands. A collision ensued as the fishing boat tried to escape. The patrol boat chased down the fishing boat in the adjacent EEZ*, arresting the captain for the crime of obstruction of performing a public duty. The rest of its crew were taken together with the boat for questioning to Ishigakijima, the nearest well-populated island in Okinawa.

I was curious to see how the Chinese side would react. The diplomatic response seemed par for the course: protests and claims of sovereignty over the uninhabited islands as well as demands for the release of the fishing boat and its crew, issued from the Chinese MOFA spokesman and ambassador in Tokyo and through the Japanese ambassador in Beijing. Meanwhile, the Chinese public also reportedly went into its usual routine consisting of angry media reports, public protests in front of the Japanese embassy, burning rage in chatrooms and the like. What occupied my thoughts were the possibility of boycotts of Japanese products and assaults on Japanese embassies and consulates and their personnel, and further actions that the Chinese authorities would take to keep such threats of civil unrest to a minimum.

The first and more alarming Chinese act was the September 9 announcement of the dispatch of a fishing observation vessel belonging to the Ministry of Agriculture to the Senkaku waters to protect Chinese fishing boats. Such an action may be standard practice for the Chinese authorities**, but it would set the two sides up for a clash the first time a Japanese patrol boat tries to board and inspect a Chinese fishing boat—one news report provides an estimate of 160 such boats plying the disputed waters at any time—and the Chinese observation vessel intervenes. Necessary for domestic consumption perhaps, but the Senkaku Islands are under the effective control of Japan, much the way the Northern Territories and Takashima are held by Russia and South Korea respectively. What happened to possession as nine points of the law? Oddly, Minister of Defense Hiromi Kitazawa stated during a press conference the following morning (September 10) that the Chinese observation vessel had already left the nearby waters. What gives?

I suspect that the answer to the second question lies in the Chinese announcement the following day (September 11) that China was unilaterally postponing the bureau director-general level talks for a East China Sea gas field joint development treaty, scheduled during the second ten days of this month. Note that this is an issue on which the Chinese authorities have been dragging their feet forever, partly because of the highly negative response to the concession—largely illusory, as I have pointed out before on this blog, but Chinese netizens are not among my most avid readers—from the Chinese public. Thus, the announcement should play well with the Chinese public. The reaction from the Japanese public is less of a concern; collectively, they lack the nationalist fervor of their East Asia counterparts. Moreover, the Japanese authorities, at least a DPJ administration, could let the issue remain without closure and not suffer any political consequences as long as the Chinese side does not unilaterally begin commercial production on their side of the median line (at least if I understand the underlying economics correctly). So, if my reasoning is sound, the Chinese side has found the optimum solution to the conundrum: appease the Chinese public and government hardliners while minimizing the risk of escalation—you can be sure that the Japanese authorities do not have another tat for the Chinese tit—that could arise from Chinese action in waters controlled by the Japanese authorities.

That said, the large and growing number of Chinese fishing boats meeting the demands of an increasingly affluent domestic population is bound to increase the chances of similar incidents. And if any one of them results in a casualty, all bets are off.

* According to my recollection, one media report, which I cannot find, mentioned that a Maritime Self-Defense Force aircraft assisted in tracking the fishing boat. Some people are making calls for closer coordination between the civil-service Coast Guard and the “military” JSDF to meet such threats to Japanese sovereignty.

** According to media reports, the Chinese MOA observation vessels vary in size, at least one of them over 4000 tons, and are often armed. They have been active around the South China Sea and beyond, where China has aggressively pushed its territorial claims against several ASEAN member states, sometimes with military force.

If You Think China Has a Problem with Japan…

On August 12, Genron NPO, a respectable Japanese advocacy thinktank, and the China Daily group released its annual report on its joint opinion poll on the attitudes of the two nations toward each other. 55.9% of the Chinese responders were unfavorably disposed toward Japan. Not good. But 72% of the Japanese responders felt the same way toward China. Worse. For the Chinese, it’s essentially about the past. Specifically, of the unfavorably disposed, 69.9% chose the war as the reason while 53.4% found that the Japanese didn’t have the correct understanding of the war of invasion. For the Japanese, it’s the here and now. 71.7% chose the Chinese government’s improper response to food safety problems and the like, 40.4% chose China’s selfishness in securing resources, energy and food, and 21.7% chose China’s military buildup.

Does either side make sense? Depends on what you mean by sense, and then only partly, but I’ll leave that question for another occasion. Many Western pundits like to say that Asia (which is actually sloppy shorthand for China and South Korea) will never fully accept Japan unless—you know the rest of the mantra. My point is that it works both ways. And you do want to know what the rest of the Asia nations think as well.


Incidentally, this is by no means a condemnation of China or its people. I suspect that the proportion of the Chinese people who do not trust its government’s response to food safety and other issues that negatively impact their daily lives is higher than 71.1%. China does tend to turn a blind eye to nuclear proliferation and human rights concerns when it comes to securing resources, but that must be understood in the context of a late market entry with 1.3 billion people to look after. And China has been careful to avoid border incidents around the Senkaku Islands and it has avoided commercial exploitation on the Japanese side on the median line in the East China Sea. China is essentially a status quo power. But China’s size means that its natural growth by itself changes the status quo. So what could be normal arm-flexing by the military, for instance, sets off alarms elsewhere. (Seriously, who cares if Singapore buys F35s?)

Another Maritime Incident, This Time with Chinese Research Vessel

The Yomiuri appears to be the first newspaper to carry the story about a Chinese research vessel chasing a Japanese Coast Guard vessel and forcing it to stop surveying the continental shelf on the Japanese side of the median line. The incident occurred on 3 May according to the Coast Guard announcement on the following day. It follows on the heels of two incidents, both involving the PLA Navy, one a fleet including two submarines in plain sight passing through the Okinawa islands—true, in international waters—and the other a helicopter/helicopters buzzing—twice!—a Japanese ship that went to observe those ships. I’ve given some thought to these maritime developments as well as the East China Sea gas fields. The following is the essence of my response to some questions. (They are not from a client, which is why I feel justified in laying them out here. I did leave out one point, because it concerns a novel idea—not quite useful in this particular instance in my view, but possibly applicable in a more general sense and certainly plausible—that did not originate from my side of the exchange.)

1. They are all deliberate acts, and the most recent one involves yet another government agency. It looks like a pattern is emerging.
2. The Chinese authorities, like the Russians, are willing to take risks when they perceive weakness. They keep pushing until there's push-back, serious consequences. And　the Hatoyama administration did act meekly in responding to the first PLA Navy incident, and the second one quieted down after a mysterious intelligence leak about an exchange between the mother vessel and the helicopter that indicated that the pilot had been freelancing.
3. The tipping point will come if and when someone on the Japanese side is killed.
4. It’s surprising that this happened parallel to the unofficial bilateral talks on the South China Sea gas fields. Perhaps they'll finally move forward on the Japanese buy-in agreement under the Fukuda administration. After all, a Japanese company/consortium taking a minority share in a Chinese development company on the Chinese side of the median line makes no concession on Japanese claims. But will anyone other than Asahi and Mainichi buy a Chinese attempt to camouflage its efforts to establish a new status quo?

Incidentally, you don’t want to mess with a Chinese research vessel if my experience 31 years ago is any indication. I was doing UNCLOS and ocean development at time and went to see a Japanese research vessel. There was a Chinese research vessel berth at the same port, there apparently as part of a bilateral exchange program. I went to take a look at it—I think I could actually go on board, but my memory may be playing tricks on me—and saw a piece of equipment rising from the deck and covered with a sheet that looked suspiciously like a large, mounted machine gun.

What, We Worry? Or, China as a Non-Threat, Revisited

This is for the most part a memo that I wrote in the course of certain work that I do. Since it’s not going to see the light of day, I won’t be violating any professional obligations if I post it here.

I have spent the better part of the 21st Century arguing against analyses from the Japanese right and even not-so-right regarding China as a threat that increasingly emanate a sense of urgency. Given this experience, I do not pretend to be able to force on you a radically different perspective. Therefore, I am merely using this opportunity to gather my thoughts and see you what you make of them.

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The Japanese, for better or worse, are not Koreans, not Pakistanis; they are comfortable playing second fiddle. For the first millennia and a half of its existence as a nation, Japan willingly paid (non-tributary) tribute to China. There is no reason to believe that it cannot settle into that East Asian role once again—if it comes to that. In the meantime, after an initial outburst of alarming rhetoric and the high-profile fumbling of the Futenma Air Base issue, Prime Minister Hatoyama has been sucked back into the Yoshida-Doctrine gravity well, naming the United States as Japan’s undisputed No.1 squeeze.

Japan: We’re No.2, so we try less harder.

Pop history aside, China currently does not pose anything approaching an existential threat to Japan. China disputes Japan’s sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands, but has made no overt move to challenge Japan’s possession. It also disputes Japan’s claim that is an island—a charge, if sustained, would cause Japan to lose a big chunk of its EEZ—but has not taken its claims to the Hague. There is a large swath of EEZ/continental shelf that both sides lay claim to, but China has carefully avoided encroaching on the disputed area in developing gas fields there while Japan is unable to do so economically. China, like Japan with regard to the Northern Territories and Takeshima, tacitly recognizes the reality behind the maxim that possession is nine points of the law and sees no advantage in changing the status quo.

Therein lies the falsehood in an Israeli analogy, a juxtaposition of two nations isolated from their neighbors with scant prospects of reconciliation. Israel was born into an overwhelmingly hostile environment. It has improved its security situation considerably since making peace with Egypt and Jordan, but continues to face grave existential threats to this day as a Euro-American—but increasingly nativist—outcrop in a sea of Moslem Arabs. By contrast, the high seas have long served Japan as a natural barrier to China’s imperial outreach. Technology has tamed and shrunk those waters, but has also transformed them into a super-gateway for commerce and interchange. Speaking of which, short of a military blockade, how is China going to seal off Japan’s sea lanes without strangling itself, since both countries are resource-poor economies that depend for the most part on the same trade routes?

Of course it’s always good to plan against capacity, not intent. And we cannot forget the aggressive moves that the Chinese military made in the 1990s against Southeast Asian neighbors regarding disputed islands as they affected claims on seabed resources. Japan does have a substantial navy in its Maritime Self-Defense Force, but just to be sure, all but the left-most politicians in Japan want the US 7th Fleet to stay, if nothing else.

But enough about national security. As I indicated with regard to the Israeli analogy, as China has grown, so has the economic relationship. Some thinkers like to see the rise of China as an undesirable outcome of some kind of a zero-sum game. But most of their arguments confuse ratios with sums. No doubt they will have their followers to the right, but the reality is that, economically speaking, a strong China is a desirable China.

But does China have other ways to crush Japan on the economic front? Could it demand, for example, that ASEAN member countries buy Chinese nuclear reactors in exchange for access to the Chinese market for their own goods? Plausible, if not probable. But remember, China and ASEAN member countries are members of WTO in good standing. More important, a Japanese nuclear power play is a US and quite likely European play as well, as would be an aircraft deal; such is the situation of so many large-scale, high-tech undertakings today. In taking a mercantilist position against Japan, China would be going up against the rest of the West as well. (I have more to same from what I would guess to be the ASEAN perspective, but I’ll leave it to the Southeast Asia analysts to argue the case on its behalf.)

Of course it need not come to that. And it won’t. Akio Toyoda, beleaguered president of the quasi-eponymous Toyota, went straight from Washington to Beijing—not London, not Paris, not Bonn, but Beijing—on a pilgrimage of penitence for his company’s braking mishaps. Make no mistake, Japanese businesses know where the next big thing is coming from, and they are determined not to miss out on it. And where Japanese businesses lead with their money and their time, Japanese politicians will follow. And China will welcome it.

The handwringing that you see on the Japanese right is just that, handwringing. And pundits will do well to avoid association with such thinking.

LDP Pisses off Chinese Ambassador. And What Else Is New?

A colleague sends me an article whose headline reads, “China protests as Uighur leader plans Japan visit”… and I am tempted.

So, can you spot the differences?

China's ambassador to Japan, Cui Tiankai, voiced Beijing's anger over the planned visit in an interview with Kyodo News and other media, and hinted that ties between the two nations could be hurt. “She is a criminal,” he was quoted as saying by Kyodo, reportedly likening her to the cult leader behind a 1995 sarin gas attack on Tokyo's subways. "How would the people of Japan feel if a violent crime occurred in Japan and its mastermind is invited by a third country?"

China's ambassador to the United States, Zhou Wenzhong, voiced Beijing's anger, and hinted that ties between the two nations could be hurt.”She is a criminal,” he was quoted as saying, reportedly likening her to the Unabomber. "How would the people of United States feel if a violent crime occurred in China and its mastermind is invited by a third country?"

Let’s hope it’s more than just Shoichi Nakagawa and friends.