The East Asian Community is a timely and visionary idea. But it also faces daunting obstacles, especially in the current climate of mistrust between China and Japan.
The countries are the two crucial pillars of any East Asian Community. In the 1980s, Japanese investment in East Asia contributed to common prosperity. Now the Chinese economy is assuming the role of regional integrator and will shape the economic future of the region.
First proposed in 1990 by then prime minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia, the idea of an East Asian regional grouping lay dormant due to stiff US opposition and the resulting Japanese hesitance to assume its leadership. The 1997 regional economic downturn gave impetus to it by creating a sense of common vulnerability to financial globalisation. Aid offered by Japan was an important psychological factor behind Malaysia's ability to withstand the crisis while China's pledge not to devalue its currency helped to stave off any further aggravation of the crisis. By contrast, the US was resented for its failure to rescue Thailand and its subsequent opposition to the Japanese proposal for a regional monetary fund.
Recent crises such as the Sars outbreak and the Indian Ocean tsunami have reinforced feelings of a shared regional predicament. The Sars crisis moved China closer to the region after Beijing made up for its earlier secrecy over the outbreak by cooperating closely with neighbours in containing the pandemic. And Japan was the largest provider of humanitarian economic aid in response to the Indian Ocean tsunami.
But where economics unites, politics divides. The growing political rift between China and Japan poses the most serious challenge to the East Asian Community concept.
Sino-Japanese relations enjoyed a period of stability following the restoration of diplomatic relations in 1972. This was based on a pragmatic compromise. China agreed to forgo reparations from Japan for the Pacific War.
In return, Japan 'deeply reproached' itself for the damage it caused to the Chinese people and recognised Taiwan as a part of China. Both China and Japan pursued a policy of what some Japanese scholars describe as mutual 'double standards'. The Chinese followed the line formulated by Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai which distinguished between Japanese militarists and the general populace. While Japan expressed regrets and remorse over the war, its leaders continued to visit the Yasukuni Shrine, where some class-A Japanese war criminals are enshrined.
Sustaining this great compromise was a powerful force: Japanese economic aid to China. Between the 1980s and 2003, China was the second-biggest recipient of Japanese aid, after Indonesia. Yet, Sino-Japanese relations unravelled in the 1990s and worsened significantly in the past few years - a classic action-reaction phenomenon.
In the 1990s, Chinese nuclear tests and military expansion began to make Japan nervous about Chinese intentions. In return, Japan strengthened its alliance with the US, which in turn fuelled Chinese perceptions of renewed Japanese militarism.
Other developments also contributed to the state of mistrust. Taiwan was a critical factor. The growing demand for Taiwanese independence led China to take an increasingly hardline attitude towards any Japanese action that seemed to be empathetic. And Japan's prolonged economic stagnation at a time of China's meteoric rise fuelled Japanese insecurity. North Korea's missile tests and nuclear programme aggravated this insecurity in
Japan, and moved Tokyo closer to Washington's strategic agenda.
The Bush administration's war on terror has offered an opportune framework for Japan to carry out political and constitutional changes which have an important basis in its concerns about China. These changes, which would permit an expansive role for Japan's military, have been interpreted by neo-nationalist elements in China as a further sign of Japanese militarism. These forces have also exploited anti-Japanese sentiments over the visits to the Yasukuni Shrine by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and the publication of Japanese textbooks that glossed over Japanese war-time atrocities in East Asia.
But China has not been the only side to indulge in such competitive nationalism. Anti-Japanese demonstrations in China, sometimes tolerated by the authorities in Beijing, have pro- duced a backlash in Japan. Japanese distrust of China has helped push its political system towards growing conservatism, shown in Mr Koi- zumi's convincing win in the general election.
What is especially ironic is that the two countries enjoy ever-closer economic ties. China today is the leading source of Japanese imports, and second-largest destination for Japanese exports. Such interdependence would be costly to break for either side and would act as a deterrent to war. But the task of East Asian community-building remains politically and psychologically challenging.
It seems especially ironic that questions regarding Japan's commitment to East Asian regionalism have emerged at a time when China is acting as a keen champion of regional cooperation. After the Pacific War, Japan became an enthusiastic promoter of regionalism (especially at the second-track level) in Asia and the Pacific.
Not only did Japan propose the idea of the Asian Monetary Fund in 1997; four years earlier, then Japanese foreign minister Taro Nakayama's suggestion about using the Asean Post-Ministerial Conferences (Asean-PMC) as a vehicle for security cooperation was crucial to the establishment of the Asean Regional Forum. His present successor, Mr Taro Aso, however has caused controversy with a statement that places Japan's alliance with the US before its interest in East Asian cooperation.
Japan and the US worry about possible Chinese dominance of the East Asian community. But China has been careful about not throwing its weight around the summit process or setting its agenda exclusively. Beijing needs to keep up with such reassurance, while Japan needs to reaffirm that its commitment to regionalism and its strategic ties with the US are not mutually exclusive. Both need to keep the economic and functional imperatives in their relationship from being undermined by nationalist political posturing. Otherwise, the East Asian Community will remain a pipe dream.
The writer is deputy director of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies. This article is based on talks at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London yesterday and Waseda University in Tokyo on Dec 3.
