Sunday, January 6, 2013

In Asia, Ill Will Runs Deep


I think most of us in the west cannot comprehend these conflicts (of course most in Asia probably cannot comprehend our current political system with the fiscal cliff and sequestration either).

But I think with the Asia rebalance we do need to understand these conflicts and the historical, cultural, nationalistic, and emotional reasons for them.
V/R
Dave

January 6, 2013

In Asia, Ill Will Runs Deep
By ODD ARNE WESTAD
London

THERE are few economies and societies on earth more complementary than China’s and Japan’s. The Chinese are relatively young, poor and restless and fiercely committed to economic growth. The Japanese are relatively old and sated, but technologically advanced and devoted to guarding their high standard of living. Proximity would seem to make the two nations ideally suited to benefit from each other.

But Japan is afraid of China’s rise, because the Chinese economy is so much more dynamic than Japan’s. And China is troubled by Japan, because the island nation seems to act as an unsinkable American aircraft carrier just off its coast.

Over the last year, nationalists in both countries have fought a war of words over the disputed islands that Japan calls Senkaku and China calls Diaoyu. Japan’s new right-wing prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has alarmed Chinese leaders with his calls for revisiting its commitment to pacifism, enshrined in the American-imposed postwar constitution, and for making the school curriculum more patriotic.

The long shadow of history continues to haunt relations between the two countries. In Asia, World War II started in 1937 as a Sino-Japanese war; millions of Chinese were killed as a result of Japan’s expansionism. But that does not explain why young people in China and Japan today are more inimical in their views of one another than their forebears — even immediately after the war — were.

The real explanation lies further back. Japan’s rise in the late 19th century was seen as an affront by China, which had always felt entitled to the mantle of regional leadership. Mao Zedong and other founders of the Chinese Communist Party adopted these views and bequeathed them to their successors.

Most Chinese today therefore regard Japan’s wealth, and its position as America’s main ally in Asia, as results of ill-gotten gains. Even when the Chinese state was at its weakest, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, its elites felt that the Confucianism China had exported to its key neighbors — Korea, Japan and Vietnam — was the root of a common culture. Other countries in the “Confucian zone” were supposed to simply accept China’s natural leadership.
(Continued at the link below)

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