Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

In its territorial dispute with Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, China has been quick to perceive a rise in Japanese right-wing views and even militarism, which it says are behind Japan’s “intransigent” stance.

A good example of this was the 29 October edition of China’s CCTV-4 Focus Today programme.  It was the second episode in a special series of “In-depth Observation of Japan”.  The programme’s expert was Yang Bojiang, a professor at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations.  He claimed to see a “vigorous” change in Japan’s direction since 1992 “when everything else in Japan took a steep downturn”.  He said that the “spirit of Japan’s peace constitution has long been emptied”.  The programme’s host, Lu Jian, added that Japan’s military was taking advantage of the territorial dispute to expand.  Another contributor, Yin Zhuo, said that Japan was planning “to build an assault-type force to carry out combat missions overseas”.

Yin went further still in drawing comparisons between Japan today and the rise of Hitler, suggesting that extreme right-wingers could use democracy to come to power “in a right-leaning social environment”.  That, he said, “is where the danger lies”.  He said that in the past two decades communist and socialist parties have disintegrated and there is now nothing to keep the right-wingers in check.

Yang added that there was a possibility of Japan launching a war over the disputed islands “given the high percentage of popular support in Japan for the Japanese government’s tough stance on the dispute”.

For China, it seems, nothing short of total capitulation will satisfy it.  The public reasonableness of Japan’s Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba is unlikely to cut any ice.  On 30 October he said: “While it may take some time, we must work persistently, tenaciously to calm the situation and stabilize economic, cultural, and people’s exchanges” between the two countries.

But if China has been hoping for support from Russia, which also has a territorial dispute with Japan, it is set to be disappointed.  On 25 October, during a visit to Japan, Russia’s Security Council secretary Nikolay Patrushev said that Russia will remain neutral – which with Japan in control of the islands is tantamount to supporting Japan.

He said: “The topic was raised.  We are not going to take anybody’s side.  They [Japan and China] should come to an agreement themselves, but we support resolving the issue through dialogue.”

Patrushev’s comments are important as they are seen as intended to create a positive atmosphere in Japan ahead of President Vladimir Putin’s meeting with Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda in Moscow in December.

As we argued in our 26 September issue, it is the challenge of China that most exercises the Kremlin, and while until now it has tried to solve the problem by developing the closest possible ties with Beijing, we took careful note of Japan’s assessment of Russia-China relations in the East Asian Strategic Review 2012 published in late March by the defence ministry’s think tank, the National Institute for Defence Studies (Nids).  The report noted that “a turnaround is being observed in Russia’s policy vis-a-vis East Asia as a result of the rise in China”.

We also noted that moves were afoot to make progress on the Kurile Island dispute between Russia and Japan ahead of Noda’s visit to Russia in December.  This will be the first official visit to Russia by a Japanese prime minister in nearly a decade.

The situation over the Kuriles is not entirely analogous to that between Japan and China over the Senkakus, in that Japan is in possession of the Senkakus while Russia is in possession of the Kuriles, but Putin no doubt intended a contrast to be drawn between Russian and Chinese approaches to the respective disputes when he told Noda during a meeting in Mexico in June that he was in favour of reactivating talks on the Kurile dispute “in a quiet atmosphere”.

Also, while China refused to attend an international disaster relief meeting which opened in Tokyo on 25 September, attended by 23 countries, on 26 September Russia and Japan were able to ignore their territorial dispute and hold a joint naval marines’ exercise off Vladivostok.

We have long forecast a closer Japan-Russia relationship, but Russia’s desire for close relations with China, coupled with the territorial dispute, have so far hampered this logical development.  Japan, however, has persisted in its hopes, and Patrushev’s comments last week provide another indicator that its persistence may be rewarded.  If that is the case, then Beijing’s belligerence and excessive rhetoric over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands may have played its part.