China Matters

[This piece appeared at Asia Times Online on May 21, 2013.  It can be reposted if ATOl is credited and a link provided.]
 
The big story in Asia affairs today is a little trip that was supposed to stay a secret: the dispatch of Isao Iijima, adviser to Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, to meet with senior officials in North Korea, thereby breaking the united US/South Korean/Japanese front in negotiations with Pyongyang.

It is the first instance of an overt divergence between Japanese and US diplomatic and security strategies, something that has been implicit in Japan's sometimes-inflammatory brand of nationalism under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe - and Abe's determination to move Japan beyond its traditional role of obedient US ally to independent regional force.

The United States has been quietly disapproving of Japan's China strategy - witness Kurt Campbell's statement that the US advised Japan against nationalizing the Senkaku islands - and provocative nationalist hi-jinks on issues like the Yasukuni Shrine, but excused them as politically motivated exercises in domestic base-pandering.

However, the North Korean trip has revealed the cloven hoof beneath the robe, as far as Japan's independent aspirations in Asia are concerned.

Japan Times made it clear that the US was not consulted in advance about the trip; US special representative for North Korea Glyn Davies was only briefed after the visit:

Japan briefed the United States on Thursday about the surprise visit to North Korea by an adviser to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

After meeting with his Japanese counterpart in Tokyo, Glyn Davies, US. special representative for North Korea policy, said he hopes to gain more "insights" into Isao Iijima's unannounced trip in the coming days. ...

The trip, apparently an effort to resolve the issue over North Korea's abductions of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s, has raised concerns that Japan could be seen as acting alone, while the United States and South Korea continue to pressure Pyongyang over its nuclear arms and missile threats.

"I have begun the process of learning a bit more about [Iijima's trip]," Davies told reporters after meeting with Shinsuke Sugiyama, director general of the Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau.

"I think we have some days to wait for all of us before we know there are any results from this mission ... we obviously will look forward to hearing from the government of Japan more details about this in [the] coming days," he said.

While South Korea has criticized the Japanese move as "not helpful," given the importance of coordinating a united front by Washington, Seoul and Tokyo against Pyongyang, Davies said, "I'm not going to address it in that way." [1]

The Christian Science Monitor calls it from the US side: "Japan's 'secret' trip to North Korea disrupts united stance against Pyongyang." [2] South Korea was less circumspect:

Seoul criticized Tokyo Thursday for dispatching an envoy to North Korea voicing concerns that the visit could undermine efforts to forge a coordinated approach toward Pyongyang.

Without prior notice to South Korea, Isao Iijima, an adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, arrived in Pyongyang spawning speculation that Japan might be trying to mend broken fences with the North, while South Korea, the US, recently even China, are making efforts to punish North Korea for conducting its third nuclear test in February by imposing sanctions.

"It is important to maintain close coordination, among South Korea, the US and Japan, toward North Korea," said [South Korean] Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Tai-young in a media briefing. "In that sense, we think that the visit by Iijima to North Korea is unhelpful." [3]

According to Japanese sources, public revelation of the trip was something of a diplomatic fiasco maliciously inflicted by North Korea:

Japan speechless on PR chief's 'secret' N.K. trip
Blown mission reveals bid to sidestep trilateral denuclearization strategy for abduction issue.

The government is keeping mum on a secret visit to North Korea by one of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's advisers after Pyongyang revealed it to the United States and South Korea.

We "can't reasonably explain" the visit because it was supposed to be kept secret, a government source said. ...

Only a handful of people, including Abe, Suga and Keiji Furuya, the minister in charge of the abduction issue, were involved in setting up the visit, they said.

A government source said there was no choice but to say: "I'm sorry, but I haven't been told about it at all," when a US official asked about Iijima's mission. [4]

It should be pointed out that secret trips to North Korea - in addition to outreach to North Korea's UN Mission in New York - are a common feature of US diplomacy.

Quite possibly, Abe believed his North Korean move would be granted equivalent secrecy by Pyongyang and Japanese diplomats could brief US diplomats with quiet pride after the fact concerning Japan's adept, confident exercise in unilateral diplomacy. If so, the media carnival unveiled by Pyongyang on the occasion of Iijima's visit revealed Abe to be rather naive, as North Korea leapt at the chance to highlight disarray in the anti-DPRK alliance.

Abe's decision to stir the North Korean pot has several elements.

The first is the desire for domestic political advantage. A breakthrough on the issue of the remaining Japanese abductees would be a feather in Abe's cap and help secure the electoral tidal wave in the July upper house elections needed to secure a two-thirds majority - and constitution revision clout - for the Liberal Democratic Party.

Second is a genuine and understandable awareness that Japan's foreign policy needs, both on North Korea in particular and Asia/China in general, have often played second fiddle to whatever grand strategy the United States is pursuing.

The "Nixon shock" of US outreach to China in 1972 is still remembered, especially among Japanese conservatives who remember it as a betrayal of the anti-communist ethos that was supposed to permeate US diplomacy. In 2007, Japan was humiliated when the US State Department undertook to resume discussions with North Korea following its first nuclear test, without even bothering to obtain North Korean lip service on the hot-button issue of the abductees.

So there is a definite sense that Japan has to look out for and advance its own priorities; for conservatives, that translates into a willingness to pursue an independent foreign policy while shrinking from overt conflict with US priorities (though Iijima's North Korean trip indicates that Japanese deference to US policy and face may be increasingly "honored in the breach" as it were).

Third and, perhaps, less appreciated, is Japan's desire to leverage its independent foreign policy into a decisive role in Asian diplomacy. Japanese unilateralism - and the demonstrated threat of Japanese unilateralism and even brinksmanship - ensures that the US has to grant Japan a de facto veto over US policies such as rapprochement with China and negotiations with North Korea in order to keep the increasingly assertive and independent Japanese government on board.

Fourth, Japan's conservatives apparently possess an atavistic desire to confound and humiliate South Korea for its pretensions to regional economic and diplomatic leadership.

As the celebratory circle jerk of stock market punters over the soaring Nikkei continues, it should be noted that for the first time since 1998 the growth rate of yen-weakened Japan will exceed that of South Korea.

Currently, South Korea has stated a noble commitment to addressing its economic difficulties through stimulation of domestic demand, thereby letting Japan reap the unilateral benefits of a weak-yen policy. However, as South Korean corporate profits erode - and if South Korea's financial markets are roiled by hot money released by Japanese quantitative easing - it is an open question as to how long South Korea will take a generous view of Japan's lunch-eating/middle-finger flourishing attitude toward its neighbor.

There are already rumblings that South Korea is facing a Japan-style aging/stagnation crisis that Keynesian pump-priming is ill-equipped to address. If so, domestic pressure will grow for the Korean government to take Japan-style countermeasures and export its own miseries-presumably to China - with quantitative easing and a weakening of the won.

Then it will be up to China to hold the line and decide if its growth prospects are strong enough to meet the challenge with greater productivity and efficiency - or take the easy route of devaluing the yuan (employing the universally sanctioned fig leaf of "quantitative easing") and drive the Asian economy into a ditch.

In an article excoriating Japan's approach to North Korea, Korea Times' Kim Tae-gyu detoured into trade and economic grievances:

Beggar-thy-neighbor policy


Abe's flagship economic policy of depreciating the country's currency to boost the price competitiveness of made-in-Japan products is also under criticism as it tries to galvanize its economy at the expenses of its neighbors.

Critics say the Abe administration's large-scale monetary easing and the resultant fast devaluation of the yen are tantamount to economic aggression toward Asian nations.

The weakening of currency of the world's No 3 economy spills over to its rivals in international markets such as Korea and China whose exporters are now panicking - it is the very essence of a "beggar-thy-neighbor" policy.

The yen was traded near a historical high of 78 yen to the dollar last year but it now fluctuates in the vicinity of 100. Many global agencies expect that the depreciation is only halfway done as it is likely to further rise to around 120 yen by the end of next year.

The weakening yen has breathed fresh life into its moribund economy, which experienced a two-decade slump. By contrast, Korean and Chinese exporters that compete with Japanese ones are complaining about their substantially reduced bottom lines. [5]

From the US point of view, South Korea and China lining up to protect their interests against predatory Japanese trade policy - on top of Japan alienating South Korea with its go-it-alone North Korea initiative - is not what the US pivot/rebalancing to Asia is supposed to be all about.

Notes:
1. U.S. briefed on Abe aide Iijima's surprise Pyongyang visit, Japan Times, May 17, 2013.
2. Japan's 'secret' trip to North Korea disrupts united stance against Pyongyang, May 17, 2013.
3. Seoul slams Japan for sending envoy to NK, Korea Times, May 16, 2013.
4. Japan speechless on PR chief's 'secret' N.K. trip, Japan Times, May 19, 2013.
5. Abe taking Japan back to imperial past, Korea Times, May 15, 2013.

Labels: China, Isao Iijima, North Korea, Shinzo Abe

Labels: Anbar Awakening, Syria

"In the circumstances in which bullets are flying like rain and wind, the soldiers are running around at the risk of losing their lives," 

"If you want them to have a rest in such a situation, a comfort women system is necessary. Anyone can understand that." 

Read more »

Labels: basing, China, comfort women, Japan, Japanese nationalism, Okinawa, Ryukyu Islands, Shinzo Abe, Toru Hashimoto

[This piece originally appeared at Asia Times Online on May 3, 2013.  It can be reposted if ATOl is credited and a link provided.  I was rather amused to see Paul Eckert of Reuters trolling the comment thread at Asia Times.  Not the way to build the Paul Eckert brand, let alone the Reuters brand.]

Two PRC territorial disputes open doors on two competing paths to Asia's future.

Door Number 1 - the sudden Sino-Indian confrontation in Ladakh - leads to the further development of the current Asian security regime as a network of bilateral relationships. Behind Door Number 2 - the festering Senkaku crisis - appears to lead to a multipolar regime with a powerful new independent player, uncertainty and danger. Asia's security future will follow one of these paths, but which one?

Events on the Indian-Chinese border have a distinctly familiar flavor. As in 1962, there is tension in Ladakh. Once again, the PRC is being blamed for an incursion. And once again, it appears that the international press is getting the story ass-backwards.

The story in the US press is that Chinese forces have barged 19 kilometers across the Line of Actual Control in the area of the Depsang Bulge to set up tents in a bleak, 17,000-foot (5,000-meter) high flat spot near the Karakorum Pass as part of the Chinese campaign to nibble away at the Indian position in Aksai Chin and demonstrate the appeasement-inclined spinelessness of the Singh government.

Understandably, it is viewed as inexplicable that the PRC is getting so chesty with India just before Premier Li Keqiang's state visit to New Delhi. As usual, when confronted with an implausible narrative, the reaction is to attribute the cognitive dissonance to Chinese irrationality, in this case to the PLA going "off the reservation" to make trouble on its own kick, demonstrating the party and state's inability to control its military.

AP provided the soundbite:

Manoj Joshi, a defense analyst at the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation, said the timing of the incursion raises questions about "whether there is infighting within the Chinese leadership, or whether someone is trying to upstage Li". [1]

Actually, it looks like the disarray is probably in Western noggins and not inside the CCP and PLA.

Drawing on a source who attended an Indian military briefing, Calcutta's The Telegraph posted a graphic that is well worth clicking on.

It illustrates that there is apparently no "Line of Actual Control" in the disputed region that is mutually acknowledged by India and the PRC. Instead, there are two "Lines of Perception". The Chinese claim they control a swath of land 10 km thisaway and the Indians claim they control a 10 km swath of land thataway. So there's a 10-km wide band of unpopulated and desolate wasteland whose "actual control" could be up for grabs.

In the past, both sides have patrolled this no-man's land but make a point of not setting up permanent facilities inside it so that the zone would not become focus of a competitive exercise in asserting control, and part of a wider fracas.

Until now.

It is not a matter of dispute that the PLA has moved troops into the area. But the troops are camping out in tents for now - non-permanent facilities in keeping with the traditional live-and-let-live precedent for the area. At the same time, the PRC is demanding that the Indian government dismantle bunkers and other permanent installations in the area. Permanent installations could very possibly represent an effort by the Indian military to transform "perceived control" of the disputed zone into "actual control".

On the Internet, assertions have surfaced that the Chinese incursion was in response to the Indian military's establishment of a permanent facility at Rika Nullah, inside the disputed zone. (It should be pointed out that a "permanent facility" in the bleak environs of Aksai Chin might simply be a few sheets of galvanized metal formed into a hut).

If this is true, a rather logical narrative emerges.

As the Times of India reporting indicates, the tussle over the "perceived control" of the "Depsung Bulge" looks like something of an inevitable glitch to be ironed out as both sides pour money, infrastructure, and forces into the area to institutionalize their "actual control" and jockey for the control of swaths of useful but not particularly vital "perceived control" territories before the security curtain comes down for good - and, hopefully, peace reigns on a well-defined and well-secured border.

The 15-day continuing face-off between troops at 16,300-feet, in a way, boils down to infrastructure build-up along the unresolved 4,057-km long Line of Actual Control (LAC). China has been assiduously strengthening it for well over two decades but has now objected to India's belated attempts to counter the moves.

India's re-activation of the advanced landing grounds (ALGS) at Daulat Beg Oldie (DBO), Fukche and Nyoma as well as construction of some temporary posts and bunkers at Chumar and Fukche near the LAC in eastern Ladakh over the last four to five years in particular has incensed China. The DBO airstrip, for instance, overlooks the strategic Karakoram Pass, while the Fukche ALG is barely 5 km from the LAC. [2]

As part of an overall strategy to formalize and assert its control over the border regions, perhaps the Indian government decided it is time to take a serious nibble out of the Depsung Bulge.

Or the Indian military, which (unlike the PLA) has a long and noble history of advancing its priorities and prerogatives in disregard for the civilian leadership, decides it wishes to create its own Senkaku moment, using the bulge as a territorial gambit.

Or the PRC did decide to commit an unprovoked incursion, squatting on bulge land in order to have a bargaining chip to get the Indian government to stand down on some of its more impressive and alarming military improvements in Ladakh. I consider this unlikely, not because of the essential law-abiding benevolence of the Chinese government but because it isn't going to work. The Indian army (and its inescapable cohort, Indian nationalist public opinion) is not going to let the Indian government wind down military assets in uncontested border territory.

In any case, the Chinese government, interested in gauging the intentions of the Indian government, sent in 50 soldiers to pitch five tents at Rika Nullah. The Indian army sent in its soldiers to pitch its tents "eyeball to eyeball".

The stage is now set for Li Keqiang to meet with Monmohan Singh and find a satisfactory way out of this ridiculous dispute.

In the big scheme of things, China is probably quite keen for good relations with India. Japan is another matter, and the Senkaku dispute - over another chunk of unimportant real estate - is considerably more unsettling.

World diplomacy is realigning in President Barack Obama's second term. The confrontational "pivot to Asia" is morphing into a "rebalancing" the makes a place for China inside the structure where together with India as observers they can ponder a more alarming case of deja vu than Indian nationalists' desire for a do-over on the 1962 war: the parallels between Germany in the 1930s and Shinzo Abe's Japan today.

This is not to say that Prime Minister Abe is a genocidal maniac determined to ignite a catastrophic world war. It is to say that some of the imperatives and opportunities that informed Germany back then and are also present in Japan today - ones that can be addressed without recourse to personalities, thereby avoiding indictment under Godwin's Law (the tongue-in-cheek rule that any Internet discussion of contemporary events invoking the name of a certain German dictator is prima facie discredited).

Consider that in its place in the international order Japan today is pretty much at the same spot Germany was in 1933: ready to shed the disarmament restrictions imposed by its conquerors (Versailles Treaty for Germany and the pacifist constitution for Japan) and reassume its role as a full-fledged (and unrestrained) member of the global community.

Impatience with foreign impositions is exacerbated by economic malaise created by the same group of foreigners who are gumming up the military works (Great Depression for Germany; Great Recession for Japan) and the concurrent transformation of a large but impoverished and dysfunctional neighbor into a rapidly growing and threatening force (the USSR for Germany; the PRC for Japan).

With the old order discredited, national rebirth becomes a matter of urgency and is heralded by a leader determined to throw off the restraints that have been shackling the military and economy, and swagger across the world stage in a manner that gratifies and electrifies the nation (he-who-must-not-be-named for Germany, Shinzo Abe for Japan).

Vulnerable territories are protected (Rhineland for Germany, Senkakus for Japan) and lost ones recovered (Saar for Germany, the Soviet-occupied Kuriles, maybe, for Japan). A risky and balance-sheet busting economic stimulus program (with a healthy military component) is enacted to translate the perfection of sovereignty and national spirit into national vitality (Germany's massive exercise in Keynesian stimulus and Japan's "Abenomics").

A newly assertive foreign policy requires strengthened alliances to deal with the big unfriendly neighbor (the Anti-Comintern pact for Germany and the US pivot architecture for Japan).

Of course, the parallels are far from complete. Unlike Nazi Germany, the redefined Japan is not preparing to embark on a ruinous quest for Lebensraum and racial reintegration through conquest. Nor does Japan consider itself existentially threatened by alien forces within its own social polity.

But then again, anxious and newly empowered nationalism frequently finds a domestic target.

On April 30, the Asahi Shimbun (which has displayed a notable dislike for things Abe) got around to reporting on the ugly fallout in Tokyo - in January - surrounding Okinawan opposition to US basing on the island:

A sidewalk in Tokyo's Ginza district was crowded with people waving Hinomaru rising-sun flags and jockeying for the best position to yell their insults and curses.

That moment came when demonstrators from Okinawa Prefecture, including mayors, assembly members and labor unionists, marched by to protest the deployment of MV-22 Osprey transport aircraft to a U.S. military base in the southern prefecture.

"You traitors," the roadside people screamed during the march on Jan. 27.

"Get out of Japan," was another common cry.

A women's group called Soyokaze (Breath of wind) and other organizations had urged people to discourage the protest by the Okinawans. Videos of the march later spread around the Internet, prompting a deluge of racist comments and conspiracy theories.

Many of the posters said the Okinawans were deliberately trying to weaken Japan's defenses and give China the upper hand in the territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.

Typical comments were "left-wingers in Okinawa are Chinese spies" and the protesters are "receiving funding from China." ...

... [A woman who attacked the march in an on-line post] said that during a time when outside threats against Japan are increasing, such demonstrations cast a pall over the Japan-U.S. security arrangement and serve the interests of China. She also said she believes China has funded anti-U.S. base activities in Okinawa Prefecture. ...

... Others believe Koreans are behind the anti-U.S. base sentiment in Okinawa Prefecture.

A man in his 40s posted a message that said, "People who are protesting the Osprey are ethnic Korean residents in Japan." ...

... Takeshi Taira, 51, a deputy managing editor of the Okinawa Times [said] the feelings toward Okinawa have become hostile.

"It is distinctly different from what I thought Japan's mainland is like," he said.

The Okinawa Times had planned to distribute about 1,000 copies of a special edition opposing the Osprey at the demonstration site in Ginza. The newspaper scrapped that idea because it could not secure the safety of its employees. [3]

While we're addressing the issue of ideological mobilization in the service of redefined (but not yet universally accepted) national goals, there's also this:

Riding high in the opinion polls and buoyed by big stock market gains, Abe has grown more outspoken about his conservative agenda, including revising the constitution and being less apologetic about Japan's wartime past - a stance that has frayed already tense relations with China and South Korea, where memories of Tokyo's past militarism run deep.

Many Japanese conservatives see the constitution, unchanged since its adoption in 1947 during the U.S.-led Allied Occupation, as an embodiment of Western-style, individualistic mores they believe eroded Japan's group-oriented traditions.

Critics see Abe's plan to ease requirements for revising the charter and then seek to change Article 9 as a "stealth" strategy that keeps his deeper aims off the public radar.

"The real concern is that a couple of years later, we move to a redefinition of a 'new Japan' as an authoritarian, nationalist order," said Yale University law professor Bruce Ackerman.

The LDP draft, approved by the party last year, would negate the basic concept of universal human rights, which Japanese conservatives argue is a Western notion ill-suited to Japan's traditional culture and values, constitutional scholars say.

"The current constitution ... provides protection for a long list of fundamental rights - freedom of expression, freedom of religion," said Meiji University professor Lawrence Repeta. "It's clear the leaders of the LDP and certain other politicians in Japan ... are passionately against a system that protects individual rights to that degree."

The draft deletes a guarantee of basic human rights and prescribes duties, such as submission to an undefined "public interest and public order". The military would be empowered to maintain that "public order." [4]

It should be pointed out that constitutional revision is not especially popular in Japan.

The key "bombs away" revision, which would entail altering Article 9 to permit "collective self defense", ie military operations on behalf of an ally when Japan itself is not under attack, was opposed by 56% of respondents in a recent Asahi poll, and supported by only 33%. (Japan under Abe has already claimed the right to send troops overseas to evacuate Japanese nationals, and to engage in pre-emptive attack in national self defense. Thankfully, enshrining "unprovoked aggression" as a Japanese constitutional right is not on the agenda, at least for now. [5])

However, revising the constitution is more a matter of political determination, not national will.

Prime Minister Abe is looking for a big win in the upper house elections in July in order to translate his current popularity into an overall two-thirds LDP super-majority. Then the LDP can push through a bill allowing the constitution to be revised by only a majority vote - something that will perhaps serve it in good stead especially if the Abenomics and Senkaku chickens come home to roost earlier than expected and the LDP's political dominance erodes.

Given his high personal popularity levels and the disarray of the opposition, Abe doesn't have to burn down the Reichstag to attain a dominant position in Japanese politics. However, the nationalist pot must be kept boiling, so don't expect things to quiet down on the Senkaku and Dokdo and Yasukuni fronts in the run-up to the elections.

The point is not that 21st century Japan is 1930s Germany. The point is that a combination of time, malaise, threats, opportunities, politics, and ambition have unleashed forces that, for good or ill (well, frankly, mainly for good), were kept bottled up for over half a century.

Thanks to a well-founded anxiety over China's rise, ineluctable US marginalization, and Japan's relative decline, Japan's conservatives are leading an effort to redefine Japan's national polity and international role in a way that is potentially more destabilizing than that traditional bugbear, "Rising China".

It is a time of national urgency and political flux, a chance for leaders with strong and not necessarily popular views to act boldly if not rashly to seize the political initiative, define the national agenda, and set the direction for the country at a crucial point in its history before time, circumstance, and elections combine to shut the window of opportunity.

And a combination of risky policies, untested leaders, unformed public opinion, powerful interests, and a dangerous strategic and economic environment could lead to unpleasant outcomes beyond the directionless dithering we've come to expect of Japan in the last decade.

China's dustup over Ladakh may be viewed as potentially stabilizing as the PRC and its neighbors develop the economic, military, and diplomatic tools to formalize control of what they already have and manage disputes that have been bubbling along for decades.

However, if Prime Minister Abe succeeds in repositioning Japan as an independent power broker in Asia - in particular, by escalating Japanese support of Philippine, Taiwanese, and Vietnamese resistance to Chinese pretensions to include military backing - the regional status quo could be upset and these disputes have the potential to be much more disruptive than the old, familiar, and often meaningless bilateral frictions between China and its neighbors.

Ironically, the prospect of Japan - an imminent nuclear weapons power-- actually putting some teeth into the US posturing that China's island disputes should be multi-lateralized appears to be giving the Obama administration and US media some significant collywobbles.

Even if World War III is not on the agenda, Japan emerging as an independent force in Asia is bad news for the United States and its quest for relevance and control in the West Pacific. As a result, "pivoting", ie "Asian democracies - plus Vietnam - equals soft containment of China" seems to be out. "Rebalancing", ie a condominium of regional powers including China, seems to be in.

"Managing Japan", I believe, is also in, as a potential area of shared US and Chinese concern and rapprochement. [6]

Japan's assertive posture vis a vis South Korea has also been a godsend to the PRC in its effort to cement economic and strategic relations with the ROK. China is on the alert to go on the diplomatic counteroffensive and promote an alternative to the unfavorable narrative of "Chinese bully" that has dominated East Asian discourse for the last few years.

"Developments concerning Japan are closely watched by its Asian neighboring countries for historical reasons," Hua Chunying told a regular press conference in Beijing on Thursday, responding to a reporter's question on Japanese leaders' recent comments on historical issues. She also expressed hope that Japan could adhere to peaceful development and take history as a mirror.

"History is like a mirror," Hua said, adding that one could truly embrace the future only after honestly facing the past. [7]

Let us hope and expect that history's mirror in the upcoming decade reflects something better than the 1940s.

Notes:
1. See Associated Press, May 02, 2013.
2. See Times of India, May 1, 2013.
3. See Asahi Shimbun, April 30, 2013.
4. See Reuters, May 1, 2013.
5. See Asahi Shimbun, May 2, 2013.
6. See China Matters, April 26, 2013.
7. See Xinhuanet, May 2, 2013.

Labels: Abenomics, Aksai Chin, constitutional revision, India, Japan, Ladakh

The Mandarin's late father was one of the wealthiest men in pre-revolutionary mainland China (and a descendant of Genghis Khan), while his late mother was an English noblewoman. Their son was born in an unnamed village in mainland China before the Communist revolution. The boy's parents died soon after his birth, and he was raised by his (paternal) aunt, who was embittered against the world and raised him with much the same attitude. Every last bit of the family fortune was spent obsessively training the Mandarin in science and combat, with the result that he was completely broke upon reaching adulthood. Unable to pay the taxes on his ancestral home, the Mandarin was evicted by the government.

In Invincible Iron Man Annual #1 by Matt Fraction, a new updated origin of the Mandarin is offered. Here, the Mandarin kidnaps a young up and coming film producer to tell his life's story. He relates the same story he once told Iron Man in Tales of Suspense of his English noblewoman mother and his schooling at the finest boarding schools in the land.

The director begins to learn that much of what the Mandarin says is contradictory and false with photos from this time staged (it is hinted that the Mandarin had used one of his own rings to make himself believe this tapestry of half truths) and discovers a different tale of the Mandarin's origins: The Mandarin was the son of a opium den prostitute who went on to become a powerful underworld figure before discovering the Ten Rings of Power in an alien craft …

Angered at the Mandarin holding his wife hostage, the director shoots the movie as he wishes not as the Mandarin dictates. The Mandarin denounces this telling of his past as lies and angrily destroys the cinema in which it was being shown, before having the director killed.

Later he regrets murdering the director, noting that he really did love his films. 

Apparently, in the main feature, Yili milk is still only suitable for second-string Oriental talent, not Occidental stars, let alone spandex (or iron)-clad superheroes.  Elsewhere, Yili gets some facetime with the above-the-line talent:

Labels: Iron Man 3, Mo Yan, Shane Black, Yili milk

[This piece originally appeared on Asia Times Online on April 26, 2013.  It can be reposted if ATOl is credited and a link provided.]

Oscar Wilde wrote, "When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers." Perhaps this is how Kurt Campbell feels today.

Campbell, after all, as assistant secretary for East Asia in Hillary Clinton's State Department, was a key architect and proponent of the "pivot to Asia", which was meant to elicit satisfactory behavior from China - and, in the process, demonstrate US leadership and relevance - by confronting the PRC with a phalanx of Pacific democracies (plus Vietnam of course) determined to impose liberal security, economic, and human rights norms on the rogue superpower.

The inevitable result of US backing has been an increased willingness of the Philippines, Vietnam, and Japan to stand up to China, which has contributed a virtuous cycle of Chinese hostility and a further defensive cleaving of the smaller nations to the United States.

The less-than-desirable by-product has been the tendency of the pivot's designated junior partners to tug at the dragon's whiskers for national and domestic political reasons, secure in the knowledge that the United States must back them up, even if the confrontation runs contrary to long-term US interests and objectives for the region.

In the case of Japan, adventurism has gotten out of hand, and the US is responding with anxiety, a shift in policy, and a sea-change in nomenclature.

History will judge if Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is the architect of Japan's renaissance, or merely an opportunistic and short-sighted nationalist. In any case, he has already demonstrated a willingness to stir the Pacific pot in ways that excite the anxiety of the United States.

The United States' discomfort at Japan's eagerness to hype the Senkaku/Diaoyutai Island dispute as a useful point of friction with China has become palpable.

Kurt Campbell, now ensconced in the private sector on the board of the Center for a New American Security think tank, chose to reveal to the Kyodo News Agency that the US government had advised Japan against the nationalization of three of the Senkaku Islands, the provocation that sparked this year's Sino-Japanese brouhaha:

The Japanese government consulted with the State Department prior to the purchase, Campbell revealed, and was given "very strong advice not to go in this direction."

The US government, in urging Japan not to follow through with the purchase, stressed the action could "trigger a crisis" with China, which claims the islands for itself.

"Even though we warned Japan, Japan decided to go in a different direction, and they thought they had gained the support of China, or some did, which we were certain that they had not," Campbell said. [1]

Stroking the Senkaku fetish might be excused as an unavoidable political imperative for Abe, given the rise in anti-Chinese feeling in Japan. However, under Abe the Japanese government has unilaterally undertaken a series of other moves to strengthen the hands of Pacific nations seeking to counter China.

In recent months, the Japanese government has agreed to provide 10 patrol boats to the Philippines; enticed Taiwan to abandon its anti-Japanese stance on the Senkakus (which, as a matter of proximity, really belong to Taiwan) by granting Taiwanese fishing vessels the right to fish near the islands (though not within the 12 mile limit); offered its economic good offices as an alternative to China as a destination for Mongolian coal; and scheduled talks with Vietnam on cooperation in "maritime security", also known as the provision of patrol boats along the Philippine model.

The spectacle of the Japanese government cutting all sorts of anti-China deals in Asia on its own kick raises the specter of an independent Japanese security policy and, with it, the kind of destabilization that the US pivot to Asia was meant to pre-empt.

As Peter Ennis reported in Dispatch Japan, the Obama administration was determined to reign in Prime Minister Abe's anti-China shenanigans during his March visit to Washington:

In a brief Oval Office appearance with Abe, Obama spoke not one word about the Senkakus, China, Okinawa, or even a "joint vision" of the sort announced with Noda. Abe tried his best to criticize China, very indirectly, but adhered to US desires to not rile-up Beijing. ...

Neither Obama nor Secretary of State John Kerry took the seemingly easy step of reiterating the January 18 statement by then-Secretary of State Clinton outlining American opposition to any effort at unilateral change of Japan's administrative control of the Senkakus. This was a far-cry from Abe's initial desire for a strong statement from Obama specifically mentioning China. ...

Obama embraced the US-Japan alliance, but did not embrace Abe. [2]

Unfortunately for the United States - and the pivot - it looks like the Japanese military cat is permanently out of the bag, as a result of Japan's growing unwillingness to accept the second-class military status imposed upon it by its defeat in World War II.

The Abe government is determined to revise Japan's "pacifist" constitution and dilute its restrictions on military operations outside Japan's borders once the LDP gains expected dominance of the Diet's upper as well as lower house - and the ability to unilaterally amend the constitution - following elections in July.

Actually, a lot of nibbling has already taken place. Recently, the Japanese cabinet decided that Japanese ground forces could be dispatched overseas "to assist in the evacuation of Japanese nationals" from danger zones. Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera asserted Japan's legal right to engage in preemptive strike to forestall an imminent attack, while stating that Japan had not developed that capability "as yet".

During Prime Minister Abe's visit to the United States, the Japanese team also touted the concept of "collective self-defense", which states that the Japanese self-defense forces could come to the defense of an ally, ie fight a war outside Japan's borders as long as it was "defending an ally". To demonstrate the benefits of the collective self-defense posture, the Japanese team also suggested that Japan's missile defense network would be pleased to knock down a North Korean missile headed for the United States.

The Obama administration, while undoubtedly appreciative of the offer to shelter beneath Japan's missile defense umbrella, was perhaps more worried about Japan knocking down something else and starting World War III, and demurred.

In a relatively unnoticed but equally significant development, the Obama administration also objected strongly to Japan's plans to process its spent fuel rods domestically and enlarge its sizable stockpile of bomb-worthy plutonium metal. [3] Another indication that Japan has slipped the leash is in the area of "Abenomics".

It is safe to say that no governments outside of Japan are enthusiastic about the keystone of Prime Minister Abe's national economic rebirth strategy: a wild bet on quantitative easing twice the size of the US effort, one that will inject US$1.4 trillion into the economy over two years and double Japan's money supply.

Officially, the objective of the policy is to boost inflation to 2%, thereby baking inflationary expectations into the economy, and stampeding "Mrs Watanabe", the prototypical Japanese saver, into buying a new car or bedpan-emptying robot right away, instead of waiting for another 20 years of continued deflation to bring the price within reach. Nobody knows if that will work.

Unofficially, the objective of the policy seems to be to drive down the yen and boost Japanese exports, which is already working.

To cite Oscar Wilde once again, export promotion is the quantitative easing consequence that dares not speak its name. Nobody who engages in quantitative easing - the United States, the European Union, or, now Japan - admits that the objective is to weaken the currency and keep factories humming with exports. Because once one country weakens its currency, everybody else will, and we're down the slippery slope.

Given the fait accompli Abe delivered to the financial markets, the Group of 20 decided to give Japan the benefit of the doubt with this less than ringing endorsement of its motives at the April 19 meeting of finance ministers in Washington:

Japan's recent policy actions are intended to stop deflation and support domestic demand.

Full stop.

The G-20 had a lot more to say about quantitative easing, as long as it didn't have to talk directly about Japan:

We will refrain from competitive devaluation and will not target our exchange rates for competitive purposes, and we will resist all forms of protectionism and keep our markets open. We reiterate that excess volatility of financial flows and disorderly movements in exchange rates have adverse implications for economic and financial stability. Monetary policy should be directed toward domestic price stability and continuing to support economic recovery according to the respective mandates of central banks. We will be mindful of unintended negative side effects stemming from extended periods of monetary easing.

Concerned readers will be shocked, shocked! to learn that Japanese officials and sympathetic media outlets spun the G-20's leeriness about quantitative easing and its one-sentence shirking of criticism of Japanese policy into an endorsement of Abenomics. As in:

G-20 understood Japan's policies to revive economy - BOJ's Kuroda. [4]

The Japan Times headlined with "G-20 finance chiefs back aggressive easing regime" and continued with a strategic use of the passive voice:

Those comments were viewed as giving a green light to Japan's program, which has driven the value of the yen down by more than 20 percent against the dollar since October. [5]

As reported by the Guardian, concern over Japan's Abenomics plans was already widely acknowledged back in February:

Japan will escape censure from the G20 group of nations meeting in Moscow this weekend despite widespread unease at Tokyo's aggressive intervention into currency markets to drive down the value of the yen.

It is understood that pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and several prominent G20 members has kept any reference to Japan's attempts to depress the yen out of a communique due to be released on Saturday.

A draft communique seen by Reuters suggests that Tokyo would not be singled out for criticism, as had been suggested.

An unnamed delegate was quoted as saying: "There wasn't anybody putting Japan on the spot. That's quite frankly a bit of a surprise." [6]

For its part, in order to avoid explicit criticism in the Washington meeting, the Bank of Japan declared it would print money by purchasing Japanese government bonds, not directly purchasing foreign securities and thereby explicitly strengthening foreign currencies. [7]

Nevertheless, in the real world, a lot of that money is going to end up in foreign markets (and strengthening foreign currencies) anyway, simply getting laundered through private securities firms instead of flooding out direct from the BOJ. Bill Gross, the bond guru of Pimco - and Japanese QE skeptic-told the Wall Street Journal:

"This BOJ printing seeps out daily into global markets as Japanese institutions which have sold their Japanese government bonds to the BOJ look for higher yielding replacements," said Mr Gross in an email interview Tuesday afternoon with The Wall Street Journal. "Ten-year Treasurys to us look very low-yielding, but to them they yield 125 basis points more." [8]

It is not out of line to speculate that Japan's announcement of its decision to join negotiations on the Obama administration's cherished Trans Pacific Partnership trade pact was also timed to ensure US forbearance on Japan's massive program of quantitative easing.

Japan may be enjoying some success in its public relations campaign to paper over widespread unease about its quantitative easing program, but massaging the national and financial press is not going to alleviate private US concerns about the immediate and less than beneficial impact of Prime Minister Abe's diplomatic and economic initiatives on another important pivot partner, South Korea.

In the framework of the pivot, Japan's disregard for the sensibilities and interests of the Republic of Korea, a frontline state in any effort to restrain North Korea and counter China, is well-nigh inexplicable.

Why split the anti-China alliance by fussing over the Dokdo Islands, provoking South Korea with unnecessary, symbolic affronts like Abe's offering to the Yasakuni shrine, the visit of almost 200 lawmakers to the shrine, or making statements like this?:

On Tuesday during an Upper House session, Abe was asked to comment on the 1995 statement by then-Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, who straightforwardly apologized for Japan's "colonial rule and aggression," which "caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries."

Abe didn't elaborate, but he did claim that the definition of "aggression" in general has yet to be "firmly determined" by academic experts or the international community.

What is described as aggression "can be viewed differently" depending on which side you're on, Abe said. Major South Korean newspapers slammed Abe on their front pages Wednesday. [9]

If Prime Minister Abe is unable to characterize the invasion of Korea and China as "aggression", Japan's neighbors are free to worry about how elastic his definition of "self-defense", collective or otherwise might be, once the constitution is revised.

In some circles, Japan's quantitative easing is seen as little more than a zero-sum game to juice the economy by benefiting Japanese exporters at the expense of their direct rivals in South Korea, pivot be damned:

[T]he Hyundai Research Institute predicted that if the yen reaches 100 or 110 to the dollar, South Korean exports will fall by 3.4% in the first case and 11.4% in the second.

The problem is the large degree of overlap with Japan in terms of major exports, which account for 60% of South Korea's GDP. An analysis by the Korea International Trade Association showed an overlap of about 50% between South Korea's top 100 export items and Japan's.

Indeed, Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MTIE) figures on the first quarter growth rate for export items where South Korea competes with Japan showed an 11.3% drop from the previous quarter for steel and a 3.5% drop for automobiles. With respective ratings of 0.63 and 0.58, they were the second and third most competitive industries behind shipbuilding (0.75). [10]

South Korea experiences a double whammy at the hands of Japanese quantitative easing thanks to the ROK's status as a growing, emerging economy and, therefore, a hot money magnet, as William Pesek wrote for Bloomberg, while chronicling the ROK's $16 billion stimulus counter to the 20% drop in the value of the yen:

Instead of spurring demand, ultra-low rates are creating a flood of hot money. All that cash has to go somewhere, and it's ending up in Chinese junk bonds, Philippine stocks, Australian real estate and the Korean won.

More bold steps may be coming. Korea is considering ways to insulate itself from capital-flow volatility, possibly by imposing taxes on financial transactions. Fifteen years ago, Malaysia became a pariah state when it limited the flow of money. Today, it is common-sense economics to protect your country from being overwhelmed by central-bank largesse.

Developing Asia once spread financial contagion from New York to London and Tokyo. Now, as the world's richest economies return the favor, Asian policymakers are grappling for ways to cope ? [11]

Ironically, one of the best ways for the US to restrain an increasingly independently minded Japan is by cozying up to China and redefining the pivot away from its China-containment (and provocation and destabilization-enabling) roots.

So Kurt Campbell emphasized the distance between Washington and Tokyo on the Senkakus, and - notably for someone who built a diplomatic strategy on confronting China - made the case in an op-ed for the Financial Times for increased cooperation between the US and China:

[T]he world's most important bilateral relationship is the one between the US and China. For that relationship to succeed, it must be embedded in a larger framework of US diplomacy in Asia, stretching from Japan to India, but certainly the US-China piece will be central for the 21st century. With new leadership in Beijing under President Xi Jinping settling in and President Barack Obama starting his second term, this is a defining period for the future of US-China relations. Both countries have challenging domestic agendas, but Washington and Beijing fully recognise the importance of their international interactions. [12]

The US media also made some ridiculous but significant efforts within the context of the North Korean crisis to shoehorn China into the unlikely role of America's pivot "ally". [13]

As part of the China reset, the Obama administration dispatched the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Michael Dempsey, to Beijing, where he labored to redefine the pivot as "not all about China" and, indeed, not even a pivot at all:

Economic, security, and demographic trends all lead to the Asia-Pacific region, he said.

"Furthermore, I tell them this wasn't about them, meaning China. Of course they're a factor, but this wasn't a strategy that was aimed at them in any way," Dempsey said.

The chairman added that military considerations are only part of the broader US regional strategy. "I pointed out to them that among the first visitors who came here after our ? rebalancing initiative was announced was Jack Lew, the secretary of the treasury," he said. [14]

For connoisseurs of government newspeak, it should be pointed out that apparently the "pivot", with its thrusty, aggressive connotations is "out" and the more gentle, conciliatory "rebalancing" is "in" as the description of what the US is trying to do to or with China in Asia.

Speaking of the finance side of "rebalancing", the Department of Treasury also quietly emphasized the implicit gap between Washington and Tokyo on quantitative easing while giving China some modest praise, as the German news outlet MNI reported:

If there was anything mildly unexpected in Lew's post-G20 comments, it was the highlighted praise aimed at China, increasing the emphasis on the positive beyond that of Lew's two most recent predecessors. ?

Lew's silence about Japan in his statement to his counterparts from around the world seemed to soften somewhat the emphasis placed only hours earlier by a senior Treasury official. The official had reiterated in response to a question from MNI that the US. will be watching closely to see if the expansion of quantitative easing in Japan actually does more to boost demand and inflation than it does to depreciate the yen. [15]

In another indication of US establishment umbrage, New York Times also weighed in with an editorial critical of Japan's Yasakuni Shrine antics titled "Japan's Unnecessary Nationalism".
In a significant bit of reframing that probably irked the Japanese government, the New York Times pointed out that the recent heightening of tensions around the Senkakus was a bilateral effort (China was responding to a flotilla of Japanese nationalists), not merely an exercise in Chinese "assertiveness", as the Western media usually presents the issue:

On Monday, South Korea canceled a visit to Japan by its foreign minister and China publicly chastised Japan. On Tuesday, tensions were further fueled when Chinese and Japanese boats converged on disputed islands in the East China Sea.

Japan and China both need to work on a peaceful solution to their territorial issues. But it seems especially foolhardy for Japan to inflame hostilities with China and South Korea when all countries need to be working cooperatively to resolve the problems with North Korea and its nuclear program. [16]

So, from the US perspective, maybe China is not the only big, bad guy in Asia anymore.

Add Japan, with its unilateral, damn the consequences (to others) security and fiscal aggressiveness to the list.

When one considers that the Japanese quantitative easing program could blow up the Asian and world economy in a replay of 1997 - or worse - there's even a case to be made that the genuine near-term threat to the world's well-being from Japan is perhaps greater than that from China.

As one finance guru told CNBC:

There are additional risks, the most glaring being that a big round of quantitative easing in Japan may be no better at stoking growth and the good kind of inflation there than it has been in the US. Despite the Fed's all-out efforts, unemployment remains elevated and inflation subdued, though stocks have soared. ...

"Monetary policy is being used as the policy tool to create demand. The question is, is this going to end in tears?" Prudential's Krosby said. "Is this going to end in worse calamity for the markets than what we had in 2008 and 2009?" [17]

Creating and then managing intractable problems through reshuffled nomenclature may be the ticket to full employment for practitioners of international relations, but for promoters of the US national interest, the realization that we are now wrestling with a second assertive, unpopular, and profoundly destabilizing power in the West Pacific is cause for concern, not celebration.

Notes:
1. U.S. warned government against buying Senkaku Islands: Campbell , Japan Times, April 10, 2013.
2. For Abe, talks with Obama came down to 'take what you can get', Dispatch Japan, February 26, 2013.
3. U.S. officials concerned about Japan's plan to reprocess nuclear fuel, R&D, April 22, 2013.
4. G20 understood Japan's policies to revive economy - BOJ's Kuroda, Reuters, April 22, 2013.
5. G-20 finance chiefs back aggressive easing regime, Japan Times, April 20, 2013.
6. G20 meeting: Japan won't be singled out for currency depreciation, The Guardian, February 15, 2013.
7. Finance ministers endorse Japan's easy money, USA Today, April 19, 2013.
8. Pimco's Bill Gross Turns Bullish on 10-Year Treasury Notes, Fox News, April 9, 2013.
9. Abe war comment roils S. Korean media, Japan Times, April 24, 2013.
10. Weak yen could mean trouble ahead for South Korean exporters, The hankyoreh, April 24, 2013.
11. Click here.
12. Steps to improve US-China relations, The Financial Times, April 23, 2013. (Subscription only).
13. AP Thinks China is 'An Unreliable American Ally', China Matters, April 6, 2013.
14. China Visit Sparks Dynamic Engagements, Dempsey Says, US Department of Defense, April 24, 2013.
15. Click here.
16. Japan's Unnecessary Nationalism, The New York Times, April 23, 2013.
17. US, Japan Now Global Allies in Money Printing, CNBC, April 8, 2013.

Labels: Abe, Abenomics, Asia pivot, G20, Kurt Campbell, quantitative easing, rebalancing