送交者: omnipotent 于 2005-4-12, 13:00:20:
China Risks Overplaying its Hand
By DANIEL LYNCH
April 12, 2005
The current Chinese dispute with Japan owes much more to international power politics than to earnest anguish about historical misrepresentation. In demanding that Japan's Ministry of Education authorize only those textbooks that forthrightly acknowledge Japan's wartime atrocities, and in demanding that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi renounce visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, China seeks Japan's symbolic kowtow within a postmodern new Asian tributary system. Control over history-writing is the ultimate form of "soft power."
Japanese soldiers certainly behaved barbarically in the 1930s and '40s, and, for this reason, whitewashed textbooks and high-level shrine visits spark understandable Chinese outrage. Koreans, too, are rightly incensed by what they regard as Japan's shocking unwillingness to confront a murderous past.
But the fury of Chinese street demonstrators and Internet activists -- and the government officials who support them -- far exceeds the bounds of rationality and sincerity. The Japanese offenses occurred more than two generations ago; today's Japan is in many respects a model country: a genuinely pacifist democracy contributing enormous sums of money to the U.N., World Bank, and neighboring countries' development programs. Japan today threatens no one.
If the Chinese protesters and government officials were sincere, they would also be demanding apologies to the descendants of victims of such past Chinese barbarism as the:
• Hundreds of thousands of Muslims massacred in the 1870s as apart of Beijing's efforts to Sinify the Yunnan region east of Burma;
• Thousands of Taiwanese Aboriginals slaughtered in the pacification campaigns launched by China in the 1870s and '80s to "civilize" Taiwan's mountainous zones;
• Thousands of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed in China's 1979 invasion, designed to "teach Vietnam a lesson" for having had the temerity to roust China's ally Pol Pot from power in Cambodia.
So numerous are the Chinese state's historical crimes -- in neighboring countries and inside China itself -- that Beijing must assert the right to control history writing in Asia, lest victims of the Chinese state coalesce and critically rethink how Asia should be mapped. Beijing claims the right not only to define Japan's history and role, but also the history and role of East Turkistan (Xinjiang), Tibet, Taiwan, and more recently even Korea -- since China now insists that the ancient Korean kingdom of Koguryo was, all along, a Chinese administrative region.
All countries seeking regional or global hegemony use both material (military and economic) and soft (cultural and discourse) power in their quest. In centuries past, the tributary system and the degrading kowtow ceremony served to symbolize Asian states' submission to China. At least as spun in China itself, the key element of the tributary system was its recognition of China's place as the world's ethical and moral center.
Today, Chinese leaders and activists seek to restore this exalted status by branding Japan, China's only rival for Asian hegemony, as uniquely and timelessly immoral. Certainly, the Chinese contend, Japan is a country completely unfit to hold a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. Yet if Japan would only acknowledge its inferior status by demonstrating contrition -- and what exactly would constitute contrition is never specified -- then Chinese threats to boycott Japanese products, loot Japanese stores, and molest visiting Japanese soccer fans could be lifted.
The cost to Japan of submitting in this way would be abandonment of aspirations to become a "normal country." Japan would be forced instead forever to trail along meekly while the self-proclaimed morally-superior China leads Asia. At any time, Beijing could fire off a fusillade of propaganda to put Japan in its place. And since China would control the writing of Asian history, all of the Chinese state's victims would be silenced.
Precisely the same deal is on offer to the Taiwanese (as well as to the Uighurs, Kazakhs, and Tibetans). If Taiwanese would only kowtow by accepting the "one China principle," and acknowledge a subordinate role to Beijing, all manner of material benefits would follow. Even to Australia, Chinese officials warn that cooperating too closely with the U.S. on Taiwan will endanger trade. Almost all other countries were asked to issue public statements supporting China's anti-secession law, aimed at retaining control over the imperial territories annexed violently in the past (including East Turkistan and Tibet), and at pressuring Taiwanese to cease resisting.
Japan has responded to Chinese pressures partly by asserting a new nationalistic persona vis-à-vis South Korea. In allowing local activists to stake Japan's claim to the disputed Tokdo/Takeshima islands, and in approving textbooks that whitewash Japanese brutality in colonial Korea, Tokyo displays extraordinary strategic ineptness.
Koreans are currently worried about the long-term implications of China's assertion of sovereignty over Koguryo. In January, the Seoul Municipal Government even changed the Chinese name of Seoul from "Hancheng" (which means "Chinese city") to "Shou'er" (a meaningless term which sounds like "Seoul"), seeking to preclude future confusion. South Korea-Japan relations had been unprecedentedly warm in recent years. Japan would have been wiser to have shelved its disputes with Korea to concentrate on putting up a common defense against China. Instead, Japanese actions have prompted the Korean government to assert that it seeks an equidistant position between China and Japan.
In reality, neither Japan nor South Korea can seriously threaten the other. But China -- and its close ally, North Korea -- can certainly threaten Japan and South Korea. China's leaders may think that continuing to put pressure on Japan will force Tokyo to make even more blunders in the future, but this is a risky policy for China to pursue. If China starts appearing to be a bully or troublemaker, South Korea may conclude that it has little choice but to work with Japan in a common quest to uphold the balance of power in Northeast Asia.
Chinese leaders and the nationalistic intellectuals who support them frequently underestimate the concern spawned in Asia by China's rise. They cannot imagine that anyone would see China's successes as anything but positive. As a result, they risk overplaying their hand. China's wisest course now would be to "rein in the horse at the precipice" and call off the attacks on Japan. It would, in fact, be a brilliant stroke for Chinese soft power if Beijing were solemnly to declare that "the Chinese people forgive Japan," especially in the absence of a sincere new Japanese apology. Such a bold and inspiring move might even set in motion a chain of events resulting in China earning the legitimate right to write Asian history. That, however, seems woefully unlikely.
Mr. Lynch is a professor of international relations at the University of Southern California.
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