The Fat Years (31 page)
China also did not oppose Russian efforts to counteract American influence in the continental-heartland regions of Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Ukraine. These multiethnic nations didn’t, however, want to throw themselves back into the Russian embrace. Kazakhstan, for example, has not forgotten the great suffering it endured as a result of Stalin’s forced-removal policies and on the Soviet collective farms. Uzbekistan was even casting amorous glances toward the United States and NATO. All the Central Asian nations agreed that China had no political ambitions in the region, and so they felt more confident in doing business with China. On the contrary, it was China that didn’t want Russia to get the idea that they were trying to muscle in on Russia’s sphere of influence. The new foreign-policy term for the Chinese and Russian governments was “coordinated diplomacy,” and that explains why the Chinese provided a huge loan to the small nation of Moldova, to the west of the Black Sea, with which China had never had any affiliation. It was to collaborate with the Russians in their effort to prevent Western power from moving East.
China has for a long time endured much humiliation to accomplish the task of making Russia a friendly ally. Through more than a century, Russia has occupied over 1.5 million square kilometers of Chinese territory, an area three times the size of France. Many years ago China gave up any claim on these lands and the two nations jointly declared the Sino–Russian borders fixed. As long as China doesn’t bring this matter up again, there is no further reason why China and Russia should have any major conflicts. Russia is very large, its population is in decline, and it is under threat militarily from the power of NATO on its western front. It is expending all its strength on managing the instability of its income from energy resources, controlling its non-Russian ethnic-minority populations, and reasserting the power and influence of the former Soviet Union.
Russia is overdependent on energy exports, and so this latest round of global economic decline hit it very hard. Fortunately, when Europe reduced its imports of natural gas from Russia, China immediately increased its purchases of Russian energy. From then on, Russian oil and natural gas and other staple exports, such as heavy weaponry and Siberian timber, were guaranteed a Chinese market. In 2010, Russian oil was already flowing through the Siberian Pacific pipeline from Skovorodina to Daqing in Heilongjiang Province, and now natural gas also comes into China from Yakutia through the 6,700-kilometer Yakutia–Khabarovsk–Vladivostok gas pipeline. All this reduces Russia’s dependence on the European market, as well as diversifying China’s supplies of fossil-fuel resources. Due to their lack of capital and their close ties to the government, several Russian oligarchic enterprises competed to accept China’s friendly state-enterprise investments in joint monopolies of Russian titanium, gold, and other precious metals. We can thus say that in economic terms China and Russia are mutually supportive.
Having noticed this fact, recently many Russian regions bordering on China have altered their attitudes and tacitly allowed or even openly welcomed Chinese capital, businesses, and workers to come in and cooperate in their development. For the sake of our two nations’ core interests and in consideration of our grand strategies, as long as China doesn’t bring up the question of its lost territory, China and Russia are perfectly able to live in peaceful coexistence.
He Dongsheng said that this great recent shift in the global center of gravity presented China with the opportunity of a century. In the past few years, China had been developing quite smoothly, but in order to have long-term security and to “rule the nation and pacify the world” (as the traditional phrase goes), He Dongsheng believed there was still one key move remaining: an alliance with Japan, “to make ‘East Asia for the East Asians’ a reality,” he said.
Only when Japan changed its attitude, shook off the United States, and entered Asia could American imperialism be removed from East Asia, and the Cold War arrangements finally collapse. Once the two Asian superpowers, China and Japan, joined hands, a new world order appeared, and a new post-Western, post-white era was ineluctably created. There was nothing Europe and America could do but accept it. This prospect was what had motivated Sun Yat-sen in 1924, when he went to Japan to promote Asianism and urged the Japanese not to emulate Western imperialism, but instead to join hands with China and make the traditional Chinese “Kingly Way” a reality. Sun Yat-sen was a nationalist.
“Do you think he didn’t see Japan’s ambitions?” He Dongsheng asked his audience.
He did, but he understood that neither China nor Japan alone had the might to force the Western powers out of Asia, but if they worked together, nothing could stop the rejuvenation of Asia. Sadly, though, Japan didn’t heed Sun Yat-sen’s good advice, and went on to invade China and the rest of East Asia, ruining themselves and many others, and causing both countries to suffer tremendous losses.
Now the opportunity had come again. The leaders of China and Japan risked overwhelming internal opposition to conclude an alliance, signing the most comprehensive security treaty in the history of their two nations, and an extremely close bilateral economic-cooperation agreement.
“You probably don’t know,” said He Dongsheng, “that Japanese military might is second only to that of the United States and China.” He went on to relate that, in theory, Japan’s defense spending is only 1 percent of its GDP, but the Japanese economy is very large, and, just as in China, much of its military spending is hidden in other budget items. These include naval forces, its space program, and its weapons research and development, none of which show up in the national defense budget. Although Japan’s official military spending is slightly less than China’s, Japan leads in advanced technology, and many of Japan’s civilian industries can be easily converted to military use.
With Japan having a conventional military might equal to that of China and being so geographically close, it made China extremely nervous when it was not viewed as a friendly state—not to mention the continued presence of American troops in Japan, the island of Okinawa, and South Korea.
By the same token, Japan had a similar feeling of unease as it witnessed China’s rapid rise, which might have led it to abolish its “peace constitution,” become a normal country, start an arms race with China, accept the continuing presence of the United States in East Asia, and even unilaterally develop nuclear weapons.
What sort of stability would there have been in East Asia if that happened? Both countries might have once more suffered equal and terrible losses. To disarm this time bomb, create a win-win situation for China and Japan, and force the United States to withdraw from East Asia required great wisdom or a once-in-a-century stroke of luck. That stroke of luck was the global economic stagflation.
One can say that Japan’s economic depression had already lasted more than twenty years, and every time their situation seemed to improve, they would fall back again. They were growing weaker, and the latest global economic decline made recovery look too far away to imagine. Japanese industrial production, which had once looked down its nose at the rest of the world, seemed to have no hope of recovering any time soon.
Chinese leaders saw this period of Japan’s greatest weakness as an opportunity too good to pass up. They demanded that the isolationist and protectionist Japanese market immediately be opened up to China, especially to allow China to purchase Japanese companies. If Japan refused, China would take retaliatory measures to restrict the access of Japanese goods and businesses to the Chinese market. These demands were the straw that broke the Japanese camel’s back. Now China is Japan’s number-one trading partner, and the Japanese economy recovered somewhat between 2002 and 2008, largely due to its trade with China.
In the end, and in the name of free trade, with great pomp and circumstance the two nations concluded a most-favored-nation agreement. Both countries can now go in and out of each other’s markets, without restriction, just as in China’s close bilateral economic-cooperation agreement with its Hong Kong special economic zone. This was the first time in history that Japan had freely opened its doors to another country. As these two markets rapidly became integrated, they were soon able to challenge the American and European economies.
When China and Japan joined hands, South Korea and other Asian countries all expressed a desire to collaborate with them to establish an East Asian common market. Even Australia, New Zealand, Canada’s two western provinces, and the Latin American members of APEC all wanted to organize a Pacific and East Asian community.
Besides expanding their free-trade area, China and Japan also signed an unprecedented agreement to allow the free movement between the two countries of workers with special expertise or capital investors. To assist Japan with its problem of an aging population, Chinese immigrants to Japan have to be under forty-five, while no such limit was placed on Japanese immigrants to China. On the basis of this agreement, an estimated fifty thousand or more Chinese will emigrate to Japan every year, about the same number that were going to Canada.
These Chinese have various reasons for emigrating: to find employment, because travel is easier with a Japanese passport, because of the quality of the Japanese lifestyle, or because they don’t want their children to endure the fierce competition for advancement in the Chinese education system. Most of the Japanese immigrants to China are senior citizens who can get much better value for money out of their pensions there, giving them both a higher standard of care and more enjoyment. China is helping Japan replenish its declining population with people of excellent quality. This policy also has great symbolic meaning, since it implies that China and Japan have forgotten their former enmity, and now happily receive each other into their respective countries. The process is similar to how the traditional enemies Germany and France began to live in peaceful coexistence after the Second World War and also established a new order in Europe.
Of equal importance, China and Japan signed a mutual non-aggression and national security treaty stipulating that if one of them was attacked, the other would come to its aid. It has the same structure as the United States–Japan Mutual Defense Treaty, the NATO alliance, or similar pacts between nineteenth-century European powers. A brilliant Chinese aspect of this treaty was to allay Japanese anxiety by not demanding that Japan abrogate its mutual defense treaty with the United States. Japan is now protected by both China and the United States; it has bought two insurance policies.
The Sino-Japanese security treaty also put a restraint on North Korea. On the one hand, it meant that North Korea could no longer practice nuclear blackmail against Japan, because if Japan was attacked China would come to its aid. On the other hand, Japan could no longer use the threat from North Korea to justify military expansion. After the stubborn South Korean regime began to feel isolated, they too considered signing a similar security treaty with China to further curb the power of North Korean militarism.
“That’s China for you,” said He Dongsheng with a smile. “All you have to do is recognize China as your friendly older brother, and everything can be easily accomplished, even if China has to give up some of its advantages.”
In the last century, Japan invaded China and the Chinese people hate the Japanese to this day, but today’s Japanese certainly do not hate the Chinese. They used to look down on us or even despise us, but now they fear us. In the past they were the invaders, but surprisingly they have no hate-China complex. This is easily understood if we think about it: if you inflicted terrible harm on us in the past, naturally you do not hate us now. The Japanese believe they were defeated by the Americans. Japanese territory had never before been occupied by a foreign power until the American postwar occupation, and there are still fifty thousand U.S. troops stationed on Japanese territory. Therefore, to this very day, the Japanese harbor a wish to see the Americans suffer a setback. This is part of the subtle but deep psychology between powerful and weak peoples, the invaders and the invaded, the victorious and the defeated in war—another war is not necessarily the only way to take revenge and wipe away the shame. A reversal in the status of the high and the low, or at least a new equality in status, might suffice.
This is why the East Asian Monroe Doctrine and the Sino-Japanese mutual security treaty actually had so many supporters in Japan—because they were a slap in the face to the Americans. The subtext of the extremely close Sino-Japanese bilateral economic-cooperation agreement was that Japan needs China’s assistance, and that also gave many Chinese a strong feeling of self-respect.
If Sun Yat-sen were alive today he would surely congratulate China on the realization of its century-old dream. “Well done! Well done!” was He Dongsheng’s proud conclusion.
“Ha! The realization of his century-old dream?” protested Little Xi. “If Sun Yat-sen were alive today, he’d die of anger. Sun’s Three People’s Principles were nationality, rights, and livelihood. Where are the people’s rights now? In the last hundred years, their rights have been trampled all over by your Communist Party. Every time we turn around, you’re cracking down, snatching people, and throwing them in prison.” She stamped her foot for emphasis.
“Right,” said Fang Caodi. “You say social order is in danger, there are great contradictions, and evildoers are running amok, but who’s really responsible for stirring up all this social unrest? Isn’t it all due to the corruption and incompetence of your Communist Party? It’s been over sixty years since the founding of the People’s Republic! Is the Nationalist KMT Party in power now?”
“According to you,” said Little Xi, “China has already entered an age of ascendancy and prosperity. If that’s so, why are you still unable to govern the country by the rule of law? Do you believe that China should never have the rule of law? After over sixty years in power, you’re still unable to practice good government! The problem is that your Communist Party is fundamentally opposed to real political reform. Every new policy is designed to be a cash cow for your corrupt cadres and officials, on every level. Can one-party dictatorship solve the problem of your Party’s own corruption? Just look at your ‘second generation rich,’ all those children of entrepreneurs, and ‘second generation officials,’ all those children of the Party elite. They’re disgusting. They’re all fat cats of crony capitalism!” She folded her arms in rebuke.