Will Japan emerge from its shell? The new government finds charting a new course not so easy
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Since the Democratic Party of Japan came to power in August 2009, upsetting fifty years of conservative rule, U.S.-Japan relations have been on rocky ground. It would seem that the DPJ is upending decades old policies, hewing its own path with the United States, China, and the Asia-Pacific region. As Shorenstein APARC Director for Research Daniel Sneider notes, Japan’s new tack not only has caught the United States flat-footed, but also has other countries in the Asia-Pacific worried. Most importantly, Tokyo seems to be making uncharacteristically friendly overtures to Beijing. But it would be wrong to assume that Sino-Japan relations are really much improved. From oil and gas rights in the East China Sea to China’s military modernization there are still plenty of points of contention. Moreover, the much-contested issue of U.S. marines stationed on Okinawa remains the biggest deterrent to North Korean aggression and Chinese expansion – two fears not far from Tokyo’s mind. This is not to say U.S.-Japan relations will return to the status quo, but that the interlocutors are likely to recall the reason for such a persistent alliance.
The dramatic end to Japan's half-century of conservative rule in a late August election led almost immediately to a public spat with the United States. An inward-looking Japan that had reflexively followed the American lead suddenly was no longer an obedient ally.
At a time when the US was trying to woo a recalcitrant China to become a "strategic partner", Japan's insistence on reopening an agreement over US military bases seemed to upset the regional balance. But there are recent signs of a concerted effort on both sides to put underlying strategic interests back in the forefront, propelled in part by the recent eruption of frictions between China and the US.
The row began with the newly elected Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's call for more "equal" relations with the US, his advocacy of an East Asian Community à la the EU, and his focus on repairing ties with China. Put together, some saw a nascent urge to abandon the post-war security alliance. A senior State Department official went so far as to tell the Washington Post in late October that the "the United States had ‘grown comfortable' thinking about Japan as a constant in US relations in Asia. It no longer is, he said, adding that ‘the hardest thing right now is not China, it's Japan.'"
The trigger was growing frustration over the Hatoyama government's handling of the relocation of the US Marine air base at Futenma on Okinawa. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) consistently opposed the deal to relocate the base elsewhere within Okinawa, expressing sympathy for the disproportionate burden of the US military presence in Japan born by Okinawans. American officials were loathe to reopen an agreement that had taken years to negotiate and believed the Japanese government exaggerated its domestic political constraints.
At the same time, Japan seems eager to hew its own course with China, to improve relations and begin to build the foundation for a new Asian community. If one is to believe US officials, alarm bells have been ringing among their allies and others in Asia over the rift with Japan. The talk of building a regional organization that might exclude the US made Singapore, Australia, South Korea, the Philippines and even Vietnam worried that this would only aid Chinese ambitions.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration itself was ardently wooing China. President Obama, on the eve of a trip in November, spoke of creating a "strategic partnership." In Beijing, the President avoided public finger wagging. Discussion of difficult issues such as human rights, Tibet and sanctions against Iran were conducted largely, if at all, behind closed doors.
Given their own pursuit of Chinese partnership, American officials could hardly object to Tokyo's efforts along the same lines. In public, they said this is not a zero sum game, that an easing of Sino-Japanese tensions could aid security and stability in the region for everyone. But some US officials soon saw evidence of Sino-Japanese collusion to push the US out of Asia. Privately they pointed to what was considered a telling moment following a trilateral summit of Chinese, Japanese and South Korean leaders in Tianjin in October. Talking to reporters after the meeting, Hatoyama had spoken about Japan's desire to lessen its "dependence" on the US. American officials considered Hatoyama's actions a gross display of obeisance to the Chinese.
Accusations that Japan was drifting into Chinese arms grew louder after DPJ Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa led a group of about 140 lawmakers on an adulatory visit to China in early December. Then Hatoyama and Ozawa raised hackles when they pushed for the Emperor to receive a visiting Chinese senior official, the heir apparent for leadership, Xi Jinping. However, these depictions of Tokyo lurching toward Beijing ignore the gradual evolution of Japanese policy and the deep-seated rivalry that persists.
Sino-Japanese relations reached a low point five years ago after anti-Japan demonstrations were apparently sanctioned by Chinese authorities. Unresolved wartime historical issues drove those outbursts, prompted by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni shrine, which honors Japan's war dead. Disputes over oil and gas rights in the East China Sea threatened to explode. And China launched a campaign to block Japan's bid for permanent membership in the UN Security Council.
Japanese policymakers began to worry about the impact of these tensions on Japan's growing economic interdependence with China. They were critical of Koizumi's one-sided focus on the US-Japan security alliance.
"To weather the wild seas of the 21st century, Japan's diplomacy must have two elements: the Japan-US alliance and a Japan-China entente," wrote Makoto Iokibe, a defense specialist who now heads the Japanese Defense Academy, in the summer of 2006. "A combination of a gas field accord and a depoliticized Yasukuni issue would provide Japan and China with a clear view for the joint management of East Asia."
Beginning in late 2006, a succession of Japanese administrations has made concerted efforts to repair ties with Beijing and Seoul. Though the atmosphere with China has improved, substantive differences remain. In January, Japan's foreign minister warned that Tokyo would take action if China continued to violate a 2008 deal to develop oil and gas fields jointly. When Ozawa met the Chinese defense minister in December, he said the Japanese see China's military modernization as a threat. Ozawa suggested that if such fears were not eased, Japan might be prompted to undertake its own arms build up.
The Hatoyama government has also moved to upgrade ties, including security links, with Asian powers that share a fear of China, including India, Indonesia and South Korea. Ozawa stopped in Seoul after his visit to China where he apologized for Japan's colonial rule in Korea and pledged to push through legislation granting voting rights to Korean residents in Japan, an issue of great importance to Koreans and opposed by conservatives in Japan.
Recent events seem to have caused the US to reassess its handling of relations in Northeast Asia. There is growing evidence of an emboldened China that seems to interpret America's bid for a strategic embrace with the country as a sign of weakness. The authorities in Beijing took a tougher line toward internal dissent, openly clashed with the US at the climate change talks in Copenhagen, balked at cooperation on sanctions against Iran, and brushed off American protests over evidence of cyber attacks on Western firms.
After all this, America has begun to soften its tone toward Tokyo. Officials pledge patience as the new government looks for a solution to the base problem, while also mounting a public effort to convince Japan that the Marine presence in Okinawa is key to "deterrence" of North Korea and China. There is a renewed emphasis on broadening the security agenda to include other issues, from cyber security to climate change. Hatoyama, too, has emphasized that the Japan-US alliance remains "a cornerstone for Japan to enhance its cooperative relations with other Asian countries, including China."
Whether any real lessons have been learned in Tokyo or Washington remains to be seen. But perhaps the turn in Sino-US relations has reminded people in Tokyo and Washington that there remains a strategic purpose to the alliance.
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China in the 1970s: Repression, Uncertainty, and a New Beginning
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The Stanford China Program in cooperation with the Center for East Asian Studies will host a special series of seminars to mark 60 Years of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Over the course of the winter and spring terms, we will have six leading scholars, each examining one of the six decades of the PRC's history. Our premise is that history matters. The speaker on each decade will characterize their decade, note shifts within that time, identify the pivotal events, and discuss how the decade shaped what happened afterwards.
Professor Teiwes is a scholar with an international reputation in his main area of research, Chinese elite politics. He has written extensively on re-evaluations of Chinese Communist Party history, 1935-76, and is currently researching leadership politics in the post-Mao era. His wider areas of interest lie in Chinese politics more broadly, communist and post-communist systems, the international communist movement, and American foreign policy. He is the author of several works, including Politics and Purges in China (1979, 2nd ed. 1993), Politics at Mao's Court (1990), The Tragedy of Lin Biao (1996), China's Road to Disaster (1999), and The End of the Maoist Era (2007) (the latter three studies co-authored with Warren Sun).
Philippines Conference Room
Frederick Teiwes
Professor, Department of Government and International Relations
Speaker
University of Sydney, Australia
Seminars
The Cost of the Bomb, The Cost of Slave Labor: Mutual Apology and Compensation as a Way to Address U.S. and Japanese Atrocities from World War II
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Two major unresolved issues from World War II in the Pacific are the use of the atomic bomb by the United States, which destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the use of foreign slave labor for war-related production by Japan. Koreans and Allied POWs were among those who were victims of both atrocities. While limited compensation for non-Japanese hibakusha have been won in Japanese courts in recent years, no compensation has been forthcoming for their labor under armed confinement. The American government was responsible for the use of these atomic bombs, but company contractors such as Du Pont profited from their development as well. Just as Japanese companies such as Mitsubishi that profited from foreign forced labor should contribute to a trust fund for compensation, so too should American companies that contributed to the Manhattan Project. Only when U.S. and Japanese companies and governments mutually accept responsibility through such compensation will there be an honest acknowledgement of the real costs of the use of the atomic bombs and slave labor.
David Palmer is Senior Lecturer in American Studies at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. Since 2000, his primary focus has been on the history of Japanese workers, especially those in shipbuilding, who experienced World War II and the atomic bombs.
His most recent publications include "The Straits of Dead Souls: One Man's Investigation into the Disappearance of Mitsubishi Hiroshima's Korean Forced Labourers," Japanese Studies, Dec. 2006, and "Korean Hibakusha, Japan's Supreme Court and the International Community: Can the U.S. and Japan Confront Forced Labor and Atomic Bombing?," Japan Focus, Feb. 20, 2008.
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David Palmer
Senior Lecturer in American Studies
Speaker
Flinders University, Australia
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Facts and Myths in the Globalization Debate: How Our National Policies are often Misguided and How the United States Can Continue to Keep Its Global Edge
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Few topics provoke more heated debate than globalization. Globalization is considered essential for companies that want to survive in today's economy, but it is also blamed for job losses and the economic decline of the United States. Executives say they hire from abroad because of deficiencies in the U.S. workforce and skills shortages, while worker advocacy groups say it is all about cheap labor.
Wadhwa will discuss how the contentious public debates on globalization and outsourcing commonly use data that isn't grounded in reality. He will show why globalization and outsourcing are the new reality and how this trend will continue to build even more momentum. Finally, Wadhwa will provide concrete advice and ideas on how the United States can regain its edge in the global economy by understanding the new reality and focusing on its strengths such as entrepreneurship and innovation. By effectively harnessing its highly educated and skilled workforce, and balancing immigrant intellectual capital, the United States can continue to be the winner rather than the victim of globalization.
Vivek Wadhwa, currently a visiting scholar at UC-Berkeley, is a senior research associate with the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and an executive in residence/adjunct professor at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University. He helps students prepare for the real world, lectures in class and leads groundbreaking research projects. He advises several start-up companies, writes a column for BusinessWeek.com and contributes to several international publications. Since joining Duke in 2005, he has researched globalization, its impact on the engineering profession and the sources of the United States' competitive advantage. Mr. Wadhwa holds an MBA from New York University and a BA in Computing Studies from the Canberra University in Australia.
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Vivek Wadhwa
Senior Research Associate
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Labor and Worklife Program, Harvard Law School
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Where Did They Go and What Have They Been Up To? John Ciorciari
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John D. Ciorciari was a Shorenstein Fellow at APARC in 2007-08 and an affiliate of APARC and SEAF in 2008-09 while a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Upon leaving Stanford he took up a position as an assistant professor in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.
A main purpose of the Shorenstein Fellowship is to enable post-docs to revise their dissertations for publication. John did exactly that. In 2010 Georgetown University Press will publish The Limits of Alignment in the Global South: Southeast Asia since 1975. Congratulations, John!
During his association with SEAF John also finished co-editing and co-authoring a monograph on the (in)famous Khmer Rouge trials in Cambodia. In 2009 the Documentation Center of Cambodia published the result: On Trial: The Khmer Rouge Accountability Press.
On Trial is dedicated to “the victims of [Pol Pot’s grossly misnamed] Democratic Kampuchea and to promoting a legal accountability process that will honor their memories and provide their families with justice.”
Sophal Ear, an assistant professor at the US Naval Postgraduate School (Monterey) and himself a survivor of Pol Pot’s regime praised On Trial as an “excellent,” “thoughtful,” “timely,” and “essential book.”
The renowned historian of Cambodia David Chandler—a professor emeritus at Monash University (Australia) and a former SEAF speaker—also lauded the book:
“This invaluable collection of essays, sponsored by the Cambodian NGO that has pioneered research on the Khmer Rouge era, provides a wealth of information about the so-called Khmer Rouge Tribunal. On Trial is accessible, well researched, and passionately engaged with the innumerable tragedies of the Khmer Rouge period. Its authors argue that the ongoing trials may possibly lead toward deeper reconciliation and certainly a deeper knowledge of what happened throughout the country in those horrific years.”
Other publications stemming from John’s time at Stanford include these three wide-ranging titles, all published in January 2009:
“The Balance of Great-power Influence in Contemporary Southeast Asia,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific (9: 1), pp. 157-196; International Politics and the Mess in Myanmar, JPRI Working Paper No. 114, Japan Policy Research Institute; and An Asian Monetary Fund in the Making? SCID Working Paper No. 378, Stanford Center for International Development.
While at Stanford in 2008-09 John also gave off-campus presentations on topics including Asian security, Cambodian history, and alignment politics at Columbia, Princeton, and Chicago, among other universities, and the International Studies Association, among other professional-society venues.
Future Shorenstein Fellows take note: John Ciorciari is a tough act to follow. SEAF wishes him the best of success in his future endeavors.
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Morada and Jones on 'Hard Choices'
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Edited by SEAF Director Don Emmerson and co-published in 2008-09 by APARC at Stanford and ISEAS in Singapore, Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia continues to attract attention. Excerpted below are two differing but equally thoughtful recent reviews:
Noel M. Morada is a professor of political science at the University of the Philippines-Diliman and director of the Philippines Progamme in the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) at the University Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.
Writing in Kasarinlan: Philippine Journal of Third World Studies, 23: 2 (2008), pp. 119-122, Prof. Morada found the title of Hard Choices “apt” because its authors “ask hard questions—including philosophical ones—on the merits and demerits of pushing for a more ‘people-centered’ ASEAN, the challenges and constraints in implementing Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principles in the region, as well as the possible directions that ASEAN may take in the near future.”
A “good thing” about the book, in his view, “is that the reader is left to make his or her own conclusions” about “the issues and arguments” that it presents. He notes the variety of backgrounds of the authors: from scholars based far from Southeast Asia, through local analysts on Track II, to an official from inside the ASEAN secretariat itself. Their chapters, in his judgment, contribute significantly to current debates about what balance that ASEAN should strike between “state-centered and society-centered conceptions of security,” including “the dilemmas and constraints” that state and societal actors face in pursuing a more “participatory” kind of regionalism in Southeast Asia.
Among the issues featured in Hard Choices, Morada cites “the thorny problem of intervention in the domestic affairs of [ASEAN] members,” including the challenge to regionalism posed by Myanmar’s rulers, and whether or not the ASEAN Charter can facilitate a response or may itself be an obstacle to reform. While highlighting the relative optimism of Mely Caballero-Anthony’s chapter on non-traditional security, he finds a consensus among the book’s authors that “ASEAN’s traditional norms—i.e., state sovereignty and non-interference—still rule.”
Prof. Morada ends his review thus: “This should be a required reading for graduate students specializing in Southeast Asia and a must have for ASEAN specialists and observers. More importantly, civil society groups would benefit immensely from reading this volume as part of their education about ASEAN, on which many remain uninformed. Many of my friends in the academic community in the region have in fact been quite disappointed with many civil society groups who simply want to push their agenda but have not done their homework on the workings of ASEAN. This book should help enlighten them further.”
Lee Jones is a lecturer in the Department of Politics at the College of Queen Mary, University of London.
Writing for a future issue of the ASEASUK Newsletter, a publication of the Association of Southeast Asian Studies in the United Kingdom, Dr. Jones, unlike Prof. Morada, misses a firmer editorial hand. “Theoretical engagement is relatively sparse,” writes Jones, “and the book would have benefited from an overarching framework to help structure and guide the contributions. Particularly given many contributors’ focus on Myanmar, ASEAN’s policies towards it, and ASEAN’s recent institutional evolution, an early chapter agreeing [to] a collective account of these matters would have left more space for analysis and argumentation.”
Jones singles out the chapter by “veteran official Termsak Chalermpalanupap” as “a highly informative overview of ASEAN’s institutional development which will be useful for all students of ASEAN.” Chapters by Simon Tay (on air pollution) and Michael Malley (on nuclear energy) are also praised by Jones as demonstrating that “democratisation does not (as other contributors imply) automatically produce either more liberal policies or enhanced regional cooperation.” On the contrary, writes Jones, “democratisation can give vent to illiberal, nationalist and uncooperative sentiments, particularly when dominated (as ASEAN polities are) by cynical oligarchs. It is disappointing, therefore, that none of the chapters engages in systematic analysis of the domestic social forces at work in ASEAN states.”
“On balance,” for Jones, “the evidence in Hard Choices seems to favour the pessimist viewpoint. The basis for concluding that civil society has shattered elites’ monopoly on policymaking is rather weak. None of the pro-intervention authors sufficiently counter[s] the pragmatist challenge that ASEAN coherence could not withstand the adoption of a more liberal-interventionist posture. However, this is a contingent judgment which should not lead us simply to endorse the status quo. … [T] he fate of individual countries and the overall direction and content of ASEAN regionalism depends ultimately on the struggles of ASEAN’s own citizens.
Concludes Jones: “A clear-sighted analysis of the respective strengths and weaknesses of the force of movement and reaction, without succumbing to the defeatism of endorsing authoritarianism or the romanticism of believing that democratic institutions alone imply the victory of civil society (or that ASEAN can do much to create such institutions), is therefore vital for understanding the region’s prospects.”
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Comparing health systems through the lens of pharmaceutical policy: A new book
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How do countries in the vast and diverse Asia-Pacific region differ in “prescribing cultures”? How do health systems in the region balance access to pharmaceuticals with incentives for innovation? How do the forces of globalization shape, and in turn are shaped by, cultural legacies about health and health care? These are the key questions addressed by the new Asia Health Policy Program book, Prescribing Cultures and Pharmaceutical Policy in the Asia Pacific.
AHPP held a book launch event September 23rd with three authors of the book detailing how pharmaceutical policies are interlinked globally and at the same time deeply rooted in local culture.
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