from Peter Myers:

(1) No Longer the "Lone" Superpower: Coming to Terms with China, by Chalmers
Johnson

Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 06:47:12 -0000 From: "Rowan Berkeley"
<rowan_berkeley@yahoo.co.uk>

JPRI Working Paper No. 105 (March 2005)

No Longer the "Lone" Superpower: Coming to Terms with China

by Chalmers Johnson, Japan Policy Research Institute (copied at AntiWar.com on
16 March 2005)

http://www.jpri.org/publications/workingpapers/wp105.html

I recall forty years ago, when I was a new professor working in the field of
Chinese and Japanese international relations, that Edwin O. Reischauer once
commented, "The great payoff from our victory of 1945 was a permanently disarmed
Japan." Born in Japan and a Japanese historian at Harvard, Reischauer served as
American ambassador to Tokyo in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Strange
to say, since the end of the Cold War in 1991 and particularly under the
administration of George W. Bush, the United States has been doing everything in
its power to encourage and even accelerate Japanese rearmament.

Such a development promotes hostility between China and Japan, the two
superpowers of East Asia, sabotages possible peaceful solutions in those two
problem areas, Taiwan and North Korea, left over from the Chinese and Korean
civil wars, and lays the foundation for a possible future Sino-American conflict
that the United States would almost surely lose. It is unclear whether the
ideologues and war lovers of Washington understand what they are unleashing -- a
possible confrontation between the world's fastest growing industrial economy,
China, and the world's second most productive, albeit declining, economy, Japan,
one which the United States would have both caused and in which it might well be
consumed.

Let me make clear that in East Asia we are not talking about a little
regime-change war of the sort that Bush and Cheney advocate. [1] After all, the
most salient characteristic of international relations during the last century
was the inability of the rich, established powers - Great Britain and the United
States -- to adjust peacefully to the emergence of new centers of power in
Germany, Japan, and Russia. The result was two exceedingly bloody world wars, a
forty-five-year-long Cold War between Russia and the "West," and innumerable
wars of national liberation (such as the quarter-century long one in Vietnam)
against the arrogance and racism of European, American, and Japanese imperialism
and colonialism.

The major question for the twenty-first century is whether this fateful
inability to adjust to changes in the global power-structure can be overcome.
Thus far the signs are negative. Can the United States and Japan, today's
versions of rich, established powers, adjust to the reemergence of China -- the
world's oldest, continuously extant civilization -- this time as a modern
superpower? Or is China's ascendancy to be marked by yet another world war, when
the pretensions of European civilization in its U.S. and Japanese projections
are finally put to rest? That is what is at stake.

Alice-in-Wonderland Policies and the Mother of All Financial Crises China,
Japan, and the United States are the three most productive economies on Earth,
but China is the fastest growing (at an average rate of 9.5% per annum for over
two decades), whereas both the U.S. and Japan are saddled with huge and mounting
debts and, in the case of Japan, stagnant growth rates. China is today the
world's sixth largest economy (the U.S. and Japan are first and second) and our
third largest trading partner after Canada and Mexico. [2] According to CIA
statisticians in their Factbook 2003, China is actually already the
second-largest economy on Earth measured on a purchasing power parity basis --
that is, in terms of what China actually produces rather than prices and
exchange rates. The CIA calculates the U.S.'s gross domestic product (GDP) --
the total value of all goods and services produced within a country -- for 2003
as $10.4 trillion and China's as $5.7 trillion. This gives China's 1.3 billion
people a per capita GDP of $4,385.

Between 1992 and 2003, Japan was China's largest trading partner, but in 2004
Japan fell to third place, behind the European Union (EU) and the United States.
China's trade volume for 2004 was $1.2 trillion, third in the world after the
U.S. and Germany, and well ahead of Japan's $1.07 trillion. China's trade with
the U.S. grew some 34% in 2004 and turned Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Oakland
into the United States's three busiest seaports.

The truly significant trade development of 2004 was the EU's emergence as
China's biggest economic partner, suggesting the possibility of a Sino-European
cooperative bloc confronting a less vital Japanese-American one. As Britain's
Financial Times observed, "Three years after its entry into the World Trade
Organization [in 2001], China's influence in global commerce is no longer merely
significant. It is crucial." [3] For example, most Dell Computers sold in the
U.S. are made in China, as are the DVD players of Japan's Funai Electric
Company. Funai annually exports some 10 million DVD players and television sets
from China to the U.S., where they are sold primarily in Wal-Mart stores.
China's trade with Europe in 2004 was worth $177.2 billion, with the United
States $169.6 billion, and with Japan $167.8 billion.

China's growing economic weight in the world today is widely recognized and
applauded, but it is China's growth rates and their effect on the future global
balance of power that the U.S. and Japan, rightly or wrongly, fear. The CIA's
National Intelligence Council forecasts that China's GDP will equal that of
Britain's in 2005, Germany's in 2009, Japan's in 2017, and the U.S.'s in 2042.
[4] But Shahid Javed Burki, former vice president of the World Bank's China
Department and a former finance minister of Pakistan, predicts that by 2025
China will probably have a GDP of $25 trillion in terms of purchasing power
parity and will have become the world's largest economy followed by the United
States at $20 trillion and India at about $13 trillion - and Burki's analysis is
based on a conservative prediction of a 6% Chinese growth rate sustained over
the next two decades. He foresees Japan's inevitable decline because its
population will begin to shrink drastically after about 2010. [5] Japan's
Ministry of Internal Affairs reports that the number of men in Japan already
declined by 0.01% in 2004; and some demographers, it notes, anticipate that by
the end of the century the country's population could shrink by nearly
two-thirds, from 127.7 million today to 45 million, the same population it had
in 1910. [6]

By contrast China's population is likely to stabilize at approximately 1.4
billion people, and is heavily weighted toward males. (According to Howard
French of the New York Times, in one large southern city the government-imposed
one-child-per-family policy and the availability of sonograms have resulted in a
ratio of 129 boys born for every 100 girls; 147 boys for every 100 girls for
couples seeking second or third children. The 2000 census for the country as a
whole put the reported sex ratio at birth at about 117 boys to 100 girls.) [7]
Chinese domestic economic growth is expected to continue for decades, reflecting
the pent-up demand of its huge population, relatively low levels of personal
debt, and a dynamic underground economy not recorded in official statistics.
Most important, China's external debt is relatively small and easily covered by
its reserves; whereas both the U.S. and Japan are approximately $7 trillion in
the red, which is worse for Japan with less than half the U.S. population and
economic clout.

Ironically, part of Japan's debt is a product of its efforts to help prop up
America's global imperial stance. For example, in the period since the end of
the Cold War, Japan has subsidized America's military bases in Japan to the
staggering tune of approximately $70 billion. [8] Refusing to pay for its
profligate consumption patterns and military expenditures through taxes on its
own citizens, the United States is financing these outlays by going into debt to
Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and India. This situation has
become increasingly unstable as the U.S. requires capital imports of at least $2
billion per day to pay for its governmental expenditures. Any decision by East
Asian central banks to move significant parts of their foreign exchange reserves
out of the dollar and into the euro or other currencies in order to protect
themselves from dollar depreciation would produce the mother of all financial
crises. [9]

Japan still possesses the world's largest foreign exchange reserves, which at
the end of January 2005 stood at around $841 billion. But China sits on a $609.9
billion pile of U.S. cash (as of the end of 2004), earned from its trade
surpluses with us. Meanwhile, the American government and Japanese followers of
George W. Bush insult China in every way they can, particularly over the status
of China's breakaway province, the island of Taiwan. The distinguished economic
analyst William Greider recently noted, "Any profligate debtor who insults his
banker is unwise, to put it mildly. . . . American leadership has . . . become
increasingly delusional -- I mean that literally -- and blind to the adverse
balance of power accumulating against it." [10]

The Bush administration is unwisely threatening China by urging Japan to rearm
and by promising Taiwan that should China use force to prevent a Taiwanese
declaration of independence, the U.S. will go to war on its behalf. It is hard
to imagine more shortsighted, irresponsible policies, but in light of the Bush
administration's Alice-in-Wonderland war in Iraq, the acute anti-Americanism it
has generated globally, and the politicization of America's intelligence
services, it seems possible that the U.S. and Japan might actually precipitate a
war with China over Taiwan.

Japan Rearms

Since the end of World War II, and particularly since regaining its independence
in 1952, Japan has subscribed to a pacifist foreign policy. It has resolutely
refused to maintain offensive military forces or to become part of America's
global military system. Japan did not, for example, participate in the 1991 war
against Iraq, nor has it joined collective security agreements in which it would
have to match the military contributions of its partners. Since the signing in
1952 of the Japan-United States Security Treaty, the country has officially been
defended from so-called external threats by U.S. forces located on some 91 bases
on the Japanese mainland and the island of Okinawa. The U.S. Seventh Fleet even
has its home port at the old Japanese naval base of Yokosuka. Japan not only
subsidizes these bases but subscribes to the public fiction that the American
forces are present only for its defense. In fact, Japan has no control over how
and where the U.S. employs its land, sea, and air forces based on Japanese
territory, and the Japanese and American governments have until quite recently
finessed the issue simply by never discussing it.

Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, the United States has repeatedly
pressured Japan to revise article nine of its Constitution (renouncing the use
of force except as a matter of self-defense) and become what American officials
call a "normal nation." For example, on August 13, 2004, Secretary of State
Colin Powell stated baldly in Tokyo that if Japan ever hoped to become a
permanent member of the U.N. Security Council it would first have to get rid of
its pacifist Constitution. Japan's claim to a Security Council seat is based on
the fact that, although its share of global GDP is only 14%, it pays 20% of the
total U.N. budget. Powell's remark was blatant interference in Japan's internal
affairs, but it merely echoed many messages delivered by former Deputy Secretary
of State Richard Armitage, the leader of a reactionary clique in Washington that
has worked for years to remilitarize Japan and so enlarge a major new market for
American arms. Its members include Torkel Patterson, Robin Sakoda, David Asher,
and James Kelly at State; Michael Green on the National Security Council's
staff; and numerous uniformed military officers at the Pentagon and at the
headquarters of the Pacific Command at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

America's intention is to turn Japan into what Washington neo-conservatives like
to call the "Britain of the Far East" -- and then use it as a proxy in
checkmating North Korea and balancing China. On October 11, 2000, Michael Green,
then a member of Armitage Associates, wrote, "We see the special relationship
between the United States and Great Britain as a model for the [U.S.-Japan]
alliance." [11] Japan has so far not resisted this American pressure since it
complements a renewed nationalism among Japanese voters and a fear that a
burgeoning capitalist China threatens Japan's established position as the
leading economic power in East Asia. Japanese officials also claim that the
country feels threatened by North Korea's developing nuclear and missile
programs, although they know that the North Korean stand-off could be resolved
virtually overnight -- if the Bush administration would cease trying to
overthrow the Pyongyang regime and instead deliver on American trade promises
(in return for North Korea's giving up its nuclear weapons program). Instead, on
February 25, 2005, the State Department announced that "the U.S. will refuse
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's demand for a guarantee of 'no hostile intent'
to get Pyongyang back into negotiations over its nuclear weapons programs." [12]
And on March 7, Bush nominated John Bolton to be American ambassador to the
United Nations even though North Korea has refused to negotiate with him because
of his insulting remarks about the country.

Japan's remilitarization worries a segment of the Japanese public and is opposed
throughout East Asia by all the nations Japan victimized during World War II,
including China, both Koreas, and even Australia. As a result, the Japanese
government has launched a stealth program of incremental rearmament. Since 1992,
it has enacted 21 major pieces of security-related legislation, nine in 2004
alone. [13] These began with the International Peace Cooperation Law of 1992,
which for the first time authorized Japan to send troops to participate in U.N.
peacekeeping operations.

Remilitarization has since taken many forms, including expanded military
budgets, legitimizing and legalizing the sending of military forces abroad, a
commitment to join the American missile defense ("star wars") program --
something that the Canadians in February 2005 refused to do -- and a growing
acceptance of military solutions to international problems. This gradual process
was greatly accelerated in 2001 by the simultaneous coming to power of President
George Bush and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Koizumi made his first visit
to the United States in July of that year and, in May of 2003, received the
ultimate imprimatur, an invitation to Bush's "ranch" in Crawford, Texas. Shortly
thereafter, Koizumi agreed to send a contingent of 550 troops to Iraq for a
year, extended their stay for another year in 2004, and on October 14, 2004,
personally endorsed Bush's reelection.

A New Nuclear Giant in the Making?

Koizumi has appointed to his various cabinets hard-line anti-Chinese,
pro-Taiwanese politicians. Phil Deans, director of the Contemporary China
Institute in the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London,
observes, "There has been a remarkable growth of pro-Taiwan sentiment in Japan.
There is not one pro-China figure in the Koizumi Cabinet." [14] Members of the
latest Koizumi Cabinet include the Defense Agency chief Yoshinori Ono, and the
foreign minister Nobutaka Machimura, both ardent militarists; while Foreign
Minister Machimura is a member of the right-wing faction of former Prime
Minister Yoshiro Mori, which supports an independent Taiwan and maintains
extensive covert ties with Taiwanese leaders and businessmen. [15]

Taiwan, it should be remembered, was a Japanese colony from 1895 to 1945. Unlike
the harsh Japanese military rule over Korea from 1910 to 1945, it experienced
relatively benign governance by a civilian Japanese administration. The island,
while bombed by the Allies, was not a battleground during World War II although
it was harshly occupied by the Chinese Nationalists (Chiang Kai-shek's
Guomindang) immediately after the war. Today, as a result, many Taiwanese speak
Japanese and have a favorable view of Japan. Taiwan is virtually the only place
in East Asia where Japanese are fully welcomed and liked.

Bush and Koizumi have developed elaborate plans for military cooperation between
their two countries. Crucial to such plans is the scrapping of the Japanese
Constitution of 1947. If nothing gets in the way, Koizumi's ruling Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP) intends to introduce a new constitution on the occasion
of the party's fiftieth anniversary in November 2005. This has been deemed
appropriate because the LDP's founding charter of 1955 set as a basic party goal
the "establishment of Japan's own Constitution," a reference to the fact that
General Douglas MacArthur's post-World War II occupation headquarters actually
drafted the current Constitution. The original LDP policy statement also called
for "the eventual removal of U.S. troops from Japanese territory," which may be
one of the hidden purposes behind Japan's urge to rearm. [16]

A major goal of the Americans is to gain Japan's active participation in their
massively expensive missile defense program. The Bush administration is seeking,
among other things, an end to Japan's ban on the export of military technology,
since it wants Japanese engineers to help solve some of the technical problems
of its so far failing Star Wars system. The United States has also been actively
negotiating with Japan to relocate the Army's 1st Corps from Fort Lewis,
Washington, to Camp Zama, southwest of Tokyo in the densely populated prefecture
of Kanagawa, whose capital is Yokohama. These U.S. forces in Japan would then be
placed under the command of a four-star general, who would be on a par with
regional commanders like Centcom commander John Abizaid, who lords it over Iraq
and South Asia. The new command would be in charge of all U.S. Army "force
projection" operations beyond East Asia and would inevitably implicate Japan in
the daily military operations of the American empire. Garrisoning even a small
headquarters, much less the whole 1st Corps made up of an estimated 40,000 U.S.
soldiers, in a sophisticated and centrally located prefecture like Kanagawa is
also guaranteed to generate intense public opposition and rapes, fights, car
accidents and other incidents similar to the ones that occur daily in Okinawa.
[17]

Meanwhile, Japan intends to upgrade its Defense Agency ( Boeicho ) into a
ministry and possibly develop its own nuclear weapons capability. Goading the
Japanese government to assert itself militarily may well cause the country to go
nuclear in order to deter China and North Korea, while freeing Japan from its
dependency on the American "nuclear umbrella." The military analyst Richard
Tanter notes that Japan already has "the undoubted capacity to satisfy all three
core requirements for a usable nuclear weapon: a military nuclear device, a
sufficiently accurate targeting system, and at least one adequate delivery
system." Japan's combination of fully functioning fission and breeder reactors
plus nuclear fuel reprocessing facilities give it the ability to build advanced
thermonuclear weapons; its H-II and H-IIA rockets, in-flight refueling capacity
for fighter bombers, and military-grade surveillance satellites assure that it
could deliver its weapons accurately on regional targets. What it currently
lacks are the platforms (such as submarines) for a secure retaliatory force in
order to dissuade a nuclear adversary from launching a pre-emptive first-strike.
[18]

The Taiwanese Knot Japan may talk a lot about the dangers of North Korea, but
the real objective of its rearmament is China. This has become clear from the
ways in which Japan has recently injected itself into the single most delicate
and dangerous issue of East Asian international relations -- the problem of
Taiwan. Japan invaded China in 1931 and was its wartime tormentor thereafter as
well as Taiwan's colonial overlord. Even then, however, Taiwan was viewed as,
and today is unquestionably a part of China, as the United States has long
recognized. What remains to be resolved are the terms and timing of Taiwan's
reintegration with the Chinese mainland. This process was deeply complicated by
the fact that in 1987 Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists, who had retreated to
Taiwan in 1949 at the end of the Chinese civil war (and were protected there by
the American Seventh Fleet ever after), finally ended martial law on the island.
Taiwan has since matured into a vibrant democracy, and the Taiwanese are now
starting to display their own, mixed opinions about their future.

In 2000, the Taiwanese people ended the long monopoly of power by the
Nationalists and gave the Democratic Progressive Party, headed by President Chen
Shui-bian, an electoral victory. A native Taiwanese (as distinct from the large
contingent of mainlanders who migrated to Taiwan in the baggage train of
Chiang's defeated armies), Chen stands for an independent Taiwan, as does his
party. By contrast, the Nationalists, together with a powerful mainlander
splinter party, the People First Party headed by James Soong (Song Chuyu), hope
to see an eventual peaceful unification of Taiwan with China. On March 7, 2005,
the Bush administration further complicated these delicate relations by
nominating John Bolton to be the American ambassador to the United Nations. He
is an avowed advocate of Taiwanese independence and was once a paid consultant
to the Taiwanese government.

In May 2004, in a very close and contested election, Chen Shui-bian was
reelected, and on May 20, the notorious right-wing Japanese politician Shintaro
Ishihara attended his inauguration in Taipei. (Ishihara believes that Japan's
1937 Rape of Nanking was "a lie made up by the Chinese.") Though Chen won with
only 50.1% of the vote, this was still a sizeable increase over his 33.9% in
2000, when the opposition was divided. The Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs
immediately appointed Koh Se-kai as its informal ambassador to Japan. Koh has
lived in Japan for some 33 years and maintains extensive ties to senior
political and academic figures there. China responded that it would "completely
annihilate" any moves toward Taiwanese independence even if it meant scuttling
the 2008 Beijing Olympics and good relations with the United States.

Contrary to the machinations of American neo-cons and Japanese rightists,
however, the Taiwanese people have revealed themselves to be open to negotiating
with China over the timing and terms of reintegration. On August 23, 2004, the
Legislative Yuan (Taiwan's parliament) enacted changes in its voting rules to
prevent Chen from amending the Constitution to favor independence, as he had
promised to do in his reelection campaign. [19] This action drastically lowered
the risk of conflict with China. Probably influencing the Legislative Yuan was
this warning on August 22 by Singapore's new prime minister, Lee Hsien-loong:
"If Taiwan goes for independence, Singapore will not recognize it. In fact, no
Asian country will recognize it. China will fight. Win or lose, Taiwan will be
devastated." [20]

The next important development was parliamentary elections on December 11, 2004.
President Chen called his campaign a referendum on his pro-independence policy
and asked for a mandate to carry out his reforms. Instead he lost decisively.
The opposition parties (the Nationalists and the People First Party) won 114
seats in the 225-seat parliament, while Chen's DPP and its allies took only 101
(ten seats went to independents). The Nationalist leader, Lien Chan, whose party
won 79 seats to the DPP's 89, said, "Today we saw extremely clearly that all the
people want stability in this country."

Chen's failure to capture control of parliament also meant that a proposed
purchase of $19.6 billion worth of arms from the United States was doomed. The
deal included guided-missile destroyers, P-3 anti-submarine aircraft, diesel
submarines, and advanced Patriot PAC-3 anti-missile systems. The Nationalists
and James Soong's supporters not only regard the price as too high and mostly a
financial sop to the Bush administration, which has been pushing the sale since
2001. They believe the weapons would not improve Taiwan's security. [21]

On December 27, 2004, mainland China issued its fifth Defense White Paper on the
goals of the country's national defense efforts. As one long-time observer,
Robert Bedeski, notes, "At first glance, the Defense White Paper is a hard-line
statement on territorial sovereignty and emphasizes China's determination not to
tolerate any moves at secession, independence, or separation. However, the next
paragraph . . . indicates a willingness to reduce tensions in the Taiwan Strait:
so long as the Taiwan authorities accept the one China principle and stop their
separatist activities aimed at 'Taiwan independence,' cross-strait talks can be
held at any time on officially ending the state of hostility between the two
sides." [22]

It appears that this is also the way the Taiwanese read the message. On February
24, 2005, President Chen Shui-bian met for the first time since October 2000
with Chairman James Soong of the People First Party. The two leaders, holding
diametrically opposed views on relations with the mainland, nonetheless signed a
joint statement outlining ten points of consensus. They pledged to try to open
full transport and commercial links across the Taiwan Strait, increase trade,
and ease the ban on investments in China by many Taiwanese business sectors. The
mainland reacted favorably at once. Astonishingly, this led Chen Shui-bian to
say he "would not rule out Taiwan's eventual reunion with China, provided
Taiwan's 23 million people accepted it." [23]

If the United States and Japan left China and Taiwan to their own devices, it
seems possible that they would work out a modus vivendi. Taiwan has already
invested some $150 billion in the mainland, and the two economies are becoming
more closely integrated every day. There also seems to be a growing recognition
in Taiwan that it would be very difficult to live as an independent
Chinese-speaking nation alongside a country with 1.3 billion people, 3.7 million
square miles of territory, a rapidly growing $1.4 trillion economy, and
aspirations to regional leadership in East Asia. Rather than declaring its
independence, Taiwan may try to seek a status somewhat like that of French
Canada -- a kind of looser version of a Chinese Quebec under nominal central
government control but maintaining separate institutions, laws, and customs.
[24]

The mainland would be so relieved by this solution it would probably accept it,
particularly if it could be achieved before the 2008 Beijing Olympics. China
fears that Taiwanese radicals want to declare independence a month or two before
those Olympics, betting that China would not attack then because of its huge
investment in the forthcoming games. Most observers believe, however, China
would have no choice but to go to war because failure to do so would invite a
domestic revolution against the Chinese Communist Party for violating the
national integrity of China.

Sino-American and Sino-Japanese Relations Spiral Downward It has long been an
article of neo-con faith that the U.S. must do everything in its power to
prevent the development of rival power centers, whether friendly or hostile,
which meant that after the collapse of the Soviet Union they turned their
attention to China as one of our probable next enemies. In 2001, having come to
power, the neo-conservatives shifted much of our nuclear targeting from Russia
to China. They also began regular high-level military talks with Taiwan over
defense of the island, ordered a shift of Army personnel and supplies to the
Asia-Pacific region, and worked strenuously to promote the remilitarization of
Japan.

On April 1, 2001, a U.S. navy EP-3E Aries II electronic spy plane collided with
a Chinese fighter off the south China coast. The American aircraft was on a
mission to provoke Chinese radar defenses and then record the transmissions and
procedures the Chinese used in sending up interceptors. While the Chinese jet
went down and the pilot lost his life, the American plane landed safely on
Hainan Island and its crew of twenty-four spies was well treated by the Chinese
authorities.

It soon became clear that China was not interested in a confrontation, since
many of its most important investors have their headquarters in the United
States. But it could not instantly return the crew of the spy plane without
risking powerful domestic criticism of obsequiousness in the face of
provocation. It therefore delayed eleven days, until it received a pro forma
American apology for causing the death of a Chinese pilot on the edge of China's
territorial air space and for making an unauthorized landing at a Chinese
military airfield. Meanwhile, our media had labeled the American crew as
"hostages," encouraged their relatives to tie yellow ribbons around neighborhood
trees, hailed the president for doing "a first-rate job" to free them, and
endlessly criticized China for its "state-controlled media." They carefully
avoided mentioning that the United States enforces a 200-mile aircraft-intercept
zone around the country, which stretches far beyond territorial waters.

On April 25, 2001, during an interview on national television, President Bush
was asked whether he would ever use "the full force of the American military"
against China for the sake of Taiwan. He responded, "Whatever it takes to help
Taiwan defend herself." [25] This was American policy until 9/11, when China
enthusiastically joined the " war on terrorism" and the president and his
neo-cons became preoccupied with their "axis of evil" and making war on Iraq.
The United States and China were also enjoying extremely close economic
relations, which the big-business wing of the Republican Party did not want to
jeopardize.

The Middle East thus trumped the neo-cons' Asia policy. While the Americans were
distracted, China went about its economic business for almost four years,
emerging as a powerhouse of Asia and a potential organizing node for Asian
economies. Rapidly industrializing China also developed a voracious appetite for
petroleum and other raw materials, which brought it into direct competition with
the world's largest importers, the U.S. and Japan.

By the summer of 2004, Bush strategists, distracted as they were by Iraq, again
became alarmed over China's growing power and its potential to challenge
American hegemony in East Asia. The Republican Party platform unveiled at its
convention in New York in August proclaimed that "America will help Taiwan
defend itself." During that summer, the Navy also carried out exercises it
dubbed "Operation Summer Pulse '04," which involved the simultaneous deployment
at sea of seven of our twelve carrier strike groups. An American carrier strike
group includes an aircraft carrier (usually with 9 or 10 squadrons of planes and
a total of about 85 aircraft in all), a guided missile cruiser, two guided
missile destroyers, an attack submarine, and a combination
ammunition-oiler-supply ship. Deploying seven such armadas at the same time was
unprecedented -- and very expensive. Even though only three of the carrier
strike groups were sent to the Pacific and no more than one was patrolling off
Taiwan at a time, the Chinese became deeply alarmed that this marked the
beginning of an attempted rerun of 19th century gunboat diplomacy aimed at them.
[26]

This American show of force and Chen Shui-bian's polemics preceding the December
elections also seemed to overstimulate the Taiwanese. On October 26 in Beijing,
Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to calm things down by declaring to the
press, "Taiwan is not independent. It does not enjoy sovereignty as a nation,
and that remains our policy, our firm policy. . . . We want to see both sides
not take unilateral action that would prejudice an eventual outcome, a
reunification that all parties are seeking." [27]

Powell's statement seemed unequivocal enough, but significant doubts persisted
over whether he had much influence within the Bush administration or whether he
could speak for Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. Early
in 2005, Porter Goss, the new director of the CIA, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld,
and Admiral Lowell Jacoby, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, all told
Congress that China's military modernization was going ahead much faster than
previously believed. They warned that the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review, the
every four-year formal assessment of U.S. military policy, would take a much
harsher view of the threat posed by China than the 2001 overview. [28]

In this context, the Bush administration, perhaps influenced by the election of
November 2 and the transition from Colin Powell's to Condi Rice's State
Department, played its most dangerous card. On February 19, 2005 in Washington,
it signed a new military agreement with Japan. For the first time, Japan joined
the administration in identifying security in the Taiwan Strait as a "common
strategic objective." [29] Nothing could have been more alarming to China's
leaders than the revelation that Japan had decisively ended six decades of
official pacifism by claiming a right to intervene in the Taiwan Strait.

It is possible that, in the years to come, Taiwan itself may recede in
importance to be replaced by even more direct Sino-Japanese confrontations. This
would be an ominous development indeed, one that the United States would be
responsible for having abetted but would certainly be unable to control. And the
kindling for a Sino-Japanese explosion has long been in place. After all, during
World War II the Japanese killed approximately 23 million Chinese throughout
East Asia - higher casualties than the staggering ones suffered by Russia at the
hands of the Nazis -- and yet Japan refuses to atone for or even acknowledge its
historical war crimes. Quite the opposite, it continues to rewrite history,
portraying itself as the liberator of Asia and a victim of European and American
imperialism. [30]

In -- for the Chinese -- a painful act of symbolism, after becoming Japanese
prime minister in 2001, Junichiro Koizumi made his first official visit to
Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, a practice that he has repeated every year since.
Koizumi likes to say to foreigners that he is merely honoring Japan's war dead.
Yasukuni, however, is anything but a military cemetery or a war memorial. It was
established in 1869 by Emperor Meiji as a Shinto shrine (though with its torii
archways made of steel rather than the traditional red-painted wood) to
commemorate the lives lost in campaigns to return direct imperial rule to Japan.
During World War II, Japanese militarists took over the shrine and used it to
promote patriotic and nationalistic sentiments. Today Yasukuni is said to be
dedicated to the spirits of approximately 2.4 million Japanese who have died in
the country's wars, both civil and foreign, since 1853.

In 1978, for reasons that have never been made clear, General Hideki Tojo and
six other wartime leaders who had been hanged by the Allied Powers as war
criminals were collectively enshrined at Yasukuni. The current chief priest of
the shrine denies that they were war criminals, saying "The winner passed
judgment on the loser." [31] In a museum on the shrine's grounds, there is a
fully restored Mitsubishi Zero Type 52 fighter aircraft that a placard says made
its combat debut over Chongqing in 1940, then the wartime capital of the
Republic of China. It was undoubtedly not an accident that, in Chongqing during
the 2004 Asian Cup soccer finals, Chinese spectators booed the playing of the
Japanese national anthem. [32] Yasukuni's leaders have always claimed close ties
to the imperial household, but the late Emperor Hirohito last visited the shrine
in 1975 and Emperor Akihito has never been there.

The Chinese regard Yasukuni visits by the Japanese prime minister as insulting
and somewhat comparable perhaps to Britain's Prince Harry dressing up as a Nazi
for a costume party. [33] Nonetheless, Beijing has tried in recent years to
appease Tokyo. Chinese President Hu Jintao rolled out the red carpet for Yohei
Kono, speaker of the Japanese Diet's House of Representatives, when he visited
China in September 2004; he appointed Wang Yi, a senior moderate in the Chinese
foreign service, as ambassador to Japan; and he proposed joint Sino-Japanese
exploration of possible oil resources in the offshore seas that both sides
claim. All such gestures were ignored by Koizumi who insists that he intends to
go on visiting Yasukuni.

Matters came to a head in November 2004 at two important summit meetings: an
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) gathering in Santiago, Chile, followed
immediately by an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting with
the leaders of China, Japan, and South Korea that took place in Vientiane, Laos.
In Santiago, Hu Jintao directly asked Koizumi to cease his Yasukuni visits for
the sake of Sino-Japanese friendship. Seemingly by way of reply, Koizumi went
out of his way to insult Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in Vientiane. He said to
Premier Wen, "It's about time for [China's] graduation [as a recipient of
Japanese foreign aid payments]," implying that Japan intended unilaterally to
end its 25-year-old financial aid. The word "graduation" also conveyed the
insulting implication that Japan saw itself as a teacher guiding China, the
student.

Koizumi next gave a little speech about the history of Japanese efforts to
normalize relations with China, to which Premier Wen replied, "Do you know how
many Chinese people died in the Sino-Japanese war?" Wen went on to suggest that
China had always regarded Japan's foreign aid, which he said China did not need,
as payments in lieu of compensation for damage done by Japan in China during the
war. He pointed out that China had never asked for reparations from Japan and
that Japan's payments amounted to about $30 billion over 25 years, a fraction of
the $80 billion Germany has paid to the victims of Nazi atrocities even though
Japan is the more populous and richer country.

On November 10, 2004, the Japanese Navy discovered a Chinese nuclear submarine
in Japanese territorial waters near Okinawa. Although the Chinese apologized and
called the sub's intrusion a "mistake," Defense Agency Director Ono gave it wide
publicity, further inflaming Japanese public opinion against China. [34] From
that point on, relations between Beijing and Tokyo have gone steadily downhill,
culminating in the Japanese-American announcement that Taiwan was of special
military concern to both of them, which China denounced as an "abomination."

Over time this downward spiral in relations will probably prove damaging to the
interests of both the United States and Japan, but particularly to those of
Japan. China is unlikely to retaliate directly but is even less likely to forget
what has happened -- and it has a great deal of leverage over Japan. After all,
Japanese prosperity increasingly depends on its ties to China. The reverse is
not true. Contrary to what one might expect, Japanese exports to China jumped
70% between 2001 and 2004, providing the main impetus for a sputtering Japanese
economic recovery. Some 18,000 Japanese companies have operations in China. [35]
In 2003, Japan passed the United States as the top destination for Chinese
students going abroad for a university education -- nearly 70,000 Chinese
students studying at Japanese universities compared to 65,000 at American
academic institutions. [36] These close and lucrative relations are at risk if
the U.S. and Japan pursue their militarization of the region.

A Multipolar World Tony Karon of Time magazine has observed, "All over the
world, new bonds of trade and strategic cooperation are being forged around the
U.S. China has not only begun to displace the U.S. as the dominant player in the
Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation organization (APEC), it is fast emerging as
the major trading partner to some of Latin America's largest economies. . . .
French foreign policy think tanks have long promoted the goal of 'multipolarity'
in a post-Cold War world, i.e., the preference for many different, competing
power centers rather than the 'unipolarity' of the U.S. as a single hyper-power.
Multipolarity is no longer simply a strategic goal. It is an emerging reality."
[37]

Evidence is easily found of multipolarity and China's prominent role in
promoting it. Just note China's expanding relations with Iran, the European
Union, Latin America, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Iran is
the second largest OPEC oil producer after Saudi Arabia and has long had
friendly relations with Japan, which is its leading trading partner.
(Ninety-eight percent of Japan's imports from Iran are oil.) On February 18,
2004, a consortium of Japanese companies and the Iranian government signed a
memorandum of agreement to develop jointly Iran's Azadegan oil field, one of the
world's largest, in a project worth $2.8 billion. The U.S. has opposed Japan's
support for Iran, causing Congressman Brad Sherman (D-CA) to charge that Bush
had been bribed into accepting the Japanese-Iranian deal by Koizumi's dispatch
of 550 Japanese troops to Iraq, adding a veneer of international support for the
American war there. [38]

But the long-standing Iranian-Japanese alignment began to change in late 2004.
On October 28, China's oil major, the Sinopec Group, signed an agreement with
Iran worth between $70 and $100 billion to develop the giant Yadavaran natural
gas field. China agreed to buy 250 million tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG)
from Iran over 25 years. It is the largest deal Iran has signed with a foreign
country since 1996 and will include several other benefits, including China's
assistance in building numerous ships to deliver the LNG to Chinese ports. Iran
also committed itself to exporting 150,000 barrels of crude oil per day to China
for 25 years at market prices. [39]

Iran's oil minister, Bijan Zanganeh, on a visit to Beijing noted that Iran is
China's biggest foreign oil supplier and said that his country wants to be
China's long-term business partner. He told China Business Weekly that Tehran
would like to replace Japan with China as the biggest customer for its oil and
gas. The reason is obvious: American pressure on Iran to give up its nuclear
power development program and the Bush administration's declared intention to
take Iran to the U.N. Security Council for the imposition of sanctions (which a
Chinese vote could veto). On November 6, 2004, Chinese Foreign Minister Li
Zhaoxing paid a rare visit to Tehran. In meetings with Iranian President
Mohammad Khatami, Li said that Beijing would indeed consider vetoing any
American effort to sanction Iran at the Security Council. The U.S. has also
charged China with selling nuclear and missile technology to Iran.

China and Iran already did a record $4 billion worth of two-way business in
2003. Projects included China's building of the first stage of Tehran's Metro
and a contract to build a second link worth $836 million. China will be the top
contender to build four other planned lines, including a 19 mile track to the
airport. In February 2003, Chery Automobile Company, the eighth largest
automaker in China, opened its first overseas production plant in Iran. Today,
it manufactures 30,000 Chery cars annually in northeastern Iran. Beijing is also
negotiating to construct a 240 mile pipeline from Iran to the northern Caspian
Sea to connect with the long-distance Kazakhstan to Xinjiang pipeline that it
began building in October 2004. The Kazakh pipeline has a capacity to deliver 10
million tons of oil to China per year. [40] Despite American bluster and
belligerence, Iran is anything but isolated in today's world.

The EU is China's largest trading partner and China is the EU's second largest
trading partner (after the United States). Back in 1989, to protest the
suppression of pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, the EU
imposed a ban on military sales to China. The only other countries so treated
are true international pariahs like Burma, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. Even North Korea
is not subject to a formal European arms embargo. Given that the Chinese
leadership has changed several times since 1989 and as a gesture of goodwill,
the EU has announced its intention to lift the embargo. Jacques Chirac, the
French president, is one of the strongest proponents of the idea of replacing
American hegemony with a "multipolar world." On a visit to Beijing in October
2004, he said that China and France share "a common vision of the world" and
that lifting the embargo will "mark a significant milestone: a moment when
Europe had to make a choice between the strategic interests of America and China
-- and chose China." [41]

In his trip to Western Europe in February 2005, Bush repeatedly said, "There is
deep concern in our country that a transfer of weapons would be a transfer of
technology to China, which would change the balance of relations between China
and Taiwan." [42] In early February, the House of Representatives voted 411 to 3
in favor of a resolution condemning the potential EU move. [43] The Europeans
and Chinese contend that the U.S. has vastly overstated its case, that no
weapons that could change the balance of power are involved, and that the EU is
not aiming to win massive new defense contracts from China but to strengthen
mutual economic relations in general. Immediately following Bush's tour of
Europe, the EU Trade Commissioner, Peter Mandelson, arrived in Beijing for his
first official visit. The purpose of his trip, he said, was to stress the need
to create a new strategic partnership between China and Europe.

Washington has buttressed its hard-line stance with the release of many new
intelligence estimates depicting China as a formidable military threat. Whether
this intelligence is politicized or not, it argues that China's military
modernization is aimed precisely at countering the U.S. Navy's carrier strike
groups, which would assuredly be used in the Taiwan Strait in case of war. China
is certainly building a large fleet of nuclear submarines and is an active
participant in the EU's Galileo Project to produce a satellite navigation system
not controlled by the American military. The Defense Department worries that
Beijing might adapt the Galileo technology to anti-satellite purposes. American
military analysts are also impressed by China's launch on October 15, 2003, of a
spacecraft containing a single astronaut and successfully returning him to earth
the following day. Only the former USSR and the United States had previously
sent humans into outer space.

China already has 500 to 550 short-range ballistic missiles deployed opposite
Taiwan and has 24 CSS-4 ICBMs with a range of 13,000 km to deter an American
missile attack on the Chinese mainland. According to Richard Fisher, a
researcher at the U.S.-based Center for Security Policy, "The forces that China
is putting in place right now will probably be more than sufficient to deal with
a single American aircraft carrier battle group." Arthur Lauder, a professor of
international relations at the University of Pennsylvania, concurs. He says that
the Chinese military "is the only one being developed anywhere in the world
today that is specifically configured to fight the United States of America."

The U.S. obviously cannot wish away this capability, but it has no evidence that
China is doing anything more than countering the threats coming from the Bush
administration. It seeks to avoid war with Taiwan and the U.S. by deterring them
from separating Taiwan from China. For this reason, in March 2005, China's
pro-forma legislature, the National People's Congress, passed a law making
secession from China illegal and authorizing the use of force in case a
territory tried to leave the country. [44]

The Japanese government, of course, backs the American position that China
constitutes a military threat to the entire region. Interestingly enough,
however, the government of John Howard in Australia, a loyal American ally when
it comes to Iraq, has decided to defy Bush on the issue of lifting the European
arms embargo. Australia places a high premium on good relations with China and
is hoping to negotiate a free trade agreement between the two countries.
Canberra has therefore decided to support the EU in lifting the 15-year-old arms
embargo on China. [45] Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder both say,
"It will happen."

The United States has long proclaimed that Latin America is part of its "sphere
of influence," and because of that most foreign countries have tread carefully
in doing business there. However, in the search for fuel and minerals for its
booming economy, China is openly courting many Latin American countries
regardless of what Washington thinks. On November 15, 2004, President Hu Jintao
ended a five day visit to Brazil during which he signed more than a dozen
accords aimed at expanding Brazil's sales to China and Chinese investment in
Brazil. Under one agreement Brazil will export to China as much as $800 million
annually in beef and poultry. In turn, China agreed with Brazil's
state-controlled oil company to finance a $1.3 billion gas pipeline between Rio
de Janeiro and Bahia once technical studies are completed. China and Brazil also
entered into a "strategic partnership" with the objective of raising the value
of bilateral trade from $10 billion in 2004 to $20 billion by 2007. President Hu
said that this partnership symbolized "a new international political order that
favored developing countries." [46]

In the weeks that followed, China signed important investment and trade
agreements with Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile, and Cuba. Of particular
interest, in December 2004, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela visited China and
agreed to give it wide-ranging access to his country's oil reserves. Venezuela
is the world's fifth largest oil exporter and normally sells about 60% of its
output to the United States, but under the new agreements China will be allowed
to operate 15 mature oil fields in eastern Venezuela. [47] China will invest
around $350 million to extract oil and another $60 million in natural gas wells.

China is also working to integrate East Asia's smaller countries into some form
of new economic and political community. Such an alignment, if it comes into
being, will certainly erode American and Japanese influence in the area. In
November 2004, the ten nations that make up ASEAN or the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam), met in the Laotian capital of
Vientiane, joined by the leaders of China, Japan, and South Korea. The United
States was not invited and the Japanese officials seemed uncomfortable being
there. The purpose was to plan for an East Asian summit meeting to be held in
November 2005 to begin creating an "East Asia Community." In December 2004, the
ASEAN countries and China also agreed to create a free-trade zone among
themselves by 2010.

According to Edward Cody of the Washington Post, "Trade between China and the 10
ASEAN countries has increased about 20% a year since 1990, and the pace has
picked up in the last several years." [48] This trade hit $78.2 billion in 2003
and was reported to be about $100 billion by the end of 2004. As the senior
Japanese political commentator Yoichi Funabashi observes, "The ratio of
intra-regional trade [in East Asia] to worldwide trade was nearly 52% in 2002.
Though this figure is lower than the 62% in the EU, it tops the 46% of NAFTA
[the North American Free Trade Agreement]. East Asia is thus becoming less
dependent on the U.S. in terms of trade." [49]

China is the primary moving force behind these efforts. According to Funabashi,
China's leadership plans is to use the country's explosive economic growth and
its ever more powerful links to regional trading partners to marginalize the
United States and isolate Japan. He argues that the United States underestimated
how deeply distrusted it had become in the region thanks to its narrow-minded
and ideological response to the East Asian financial crisis of 1997, which it
largely caused. On November 30, 2004, Michael Reiss, the director of policy
planning in the State Department, said in Tokyo, "The U.S., as a power in the
Western Pacific, has an interest in East Asia. We would be unhappy about any
plans to exclude the U.S. from the framework of dialogue and cooperation in this
region." [50] But it is probably already too late for the Bush administration to
do much more than delay the arrival of a China-dominated East Asian community,
particularly because of declining American economic and financial strength.

For Japan, the choices are more difficult still. Sino-Japanese enmity has had a
long history in East Asia, always with disastrous outcomes. Before World War II,
one of Japan's most influential writers on Chinese affairs, Hotsumi Ozaki,
prophetically warned that Japan, by refusing to adjust to the Chinese revolution
and instead making war on it, would only radicalize the Chinese people and
contribute to the coming to power of the Chinese Communist Party. He spent his
life working on the question "Why should the success of the Chinese revolution
be to Japan's disadvantage?" [51] In 1944, the Japanese government hanged Ozaki
as a traitor, but his question remains as relevant today as it was in the late
1930s.

Why should China's emergence as a rich, successful country be to the
disadvantage of either Japan or the United States? History teaches us that the
least intelligent response to this development would be to try to stop it
through military force. As a Hong Kong wisecrack has it, China has just had a
couple of bad centuries and now it's back. The world needs to adjust peacefully
to its legitimate claims -- one of which is for other nations to stop
militarizing the Taiwan problem -- while checking unreasonable Chinese efforts
to impose its will on the region. Unfortunately, the trend of events in East
Asia suggests we may yet see a repetition of the last Sino-Japanese conflict,
only this time the U.S. is unlikely to be on the winning side.

CHALMERS JOHNSON is president of the Japan Policy Research Institute. The first
two books in his Blowback Trilogy -- Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of
American Empire, and The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of
the Republic -- are now available in paperback. The third volume is being
written.

ENDNOTES

1. See Ewen MacAskill, "Up to 50 States are on Blacklist, Says Cheney,"
Guardian, November 17, 2001; and James Doran, "Terror War Must Target 60
Nations, Says Bush," Times (London), June 3, 2002.

2. Robert Marquand, "Japan-China Tensions Rise Over Tiny Islands," Christian
Science Monitor, February 11, 2005; Economic Report of the President,
Washington, D.C., February 17, 2004; "The World's Largest Economies," Australian
Financial Review, January 7, 2003.

3. James Kynge, "World Is Dancing to a Chinese Tune," Financial Times, December
7, 2004; "Japan is China's Largest Trade Partner in Terms of Imports," Sankei
Shimbun (Tokyo), February 16, 2005; James Brooke, "Japan's Ties to China: Strong
Trade, Shaky Politics," New York Times, February 22, 2005; "China To Replace
U.S. as No. 1 Japan Trading partner," Asia Times, August 24, 2004; and Emad
Mekay, "China Overtakes U.S. as World's Leading Consumer," Asia Times, February
18, 2005.

4. Report of the National Intelligence Council's 2020 Project, citing Goldman
Sachs, Global Economics Paper No. 99 , October 2003.

5. Shahid Javed Burki, "An Asian Stampede," Financial Times, June 11, 2001.
Arvind Virmani of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic
Relations, comes to the same conclusion: in 2025, China will be the world's
largest economy, followed by the U.S. and India. See Martin Wolf, "On the Move:
Asia's Giants Take Different Routes in Pursuit of Economic Greatness," Financial
Times, February 23, 2005.

6. David Pilling, "Fall in Number of Men in Japan," Financial Times, February
23, 2005.

7. Howard W. French, "As Girls 'Vanish,' Chinese City Battles Tide of
Abortions," New York Times, February 17, 2005.

8. Gavan McCormack, "Boots, Billions, and Blood: Koizumi's Japan in Bush's
World," ZNet, March 17, 2004.

9. Marshall Auerback, "Last Orders for the U.S. Dollar?" Japan Policy Research
Institute Critique, Vol. XII, No. 2 (March 2005); and Chris Giles, "Why George
Bush Should Heed Asia's Central Bankers," Financial Times, February 27, 2005.
Also see "Markets Hit as Asian Banks Move Away from Dollar Assets," Financial
Times, February 23, 2005; "Central Banks Seek to Calm Dollar Fears," Financial
Times, February 24, 2005; "China to Diversify Foreign Exchange Reserves," China
Business Weekly, May 8, 2004.

10. William Greider, "The End of Empire," Nation, September 23, 2002.

11. Quoted by Kosuke Takahashi, "Japan to Become 'Britain of the Far East,'"
Asia Times, February 24, 2005.

12. "U.S. Keeps Up the Heat on N. Korea," The Australian, February 26, 2005.
Also see Peter D. Zimmerman, "We Had Power to Prevent N. Korea from Going
Nuclear," St. Petersburg Times, October 26, 2004.

13. See Richard Tanter, "Japanese Militarization and the Bush Doctrine," Japan
Focus, February 15, 2005, for a list of all the laws and agreements. For details
on the degree to which Japan has quietly transformed itself into "one of the
world's foremost military powers," see Jennifer M. Lind, "Pacifism or Passing
the Buck? Testing Theories of Japanese Security Policy," International Security,
Vol. 29, No. 1 (Summer 2004), pp. 92-121.

14. Quoted by Marshall Auerback, "Will Japan Go Nuclear?" Japan Policy Research
Institute Critique, Vol. 12, No. 1 (January 2005).

15. Li Jing, "Japan's Top Hawk Ruffles China's Feathers," Asia Times, October 6,
2004; Peter Alford, "Koizumi Selects Allies to Back Military Push," The
Australian, October 9, 2004.

16. See Kosuke Takahashi, Asia Times, February 24, 2005.

17. "U.S. Military Relocation: Army General Likely to Command 1st Corps HQ in
Japan with Eye to Asia," Sankei Shimbun (Tokyo), April 21, 2004; Peter Alford,
"Tokyo Bows to Bush on Defense," The Australian, November 15, 2004; Alan Dupont,
Unsheathing the Samurai Sword: Japan's Changing Security Policy (Sydney,
Australia: Lowy Institute Paper #03, 2004); Peter Alford, "'New Low' for
Sino-Japan Relations," The Australian, November 15, 2004.

18. Tanter, op. cit.

19. Kathrin Hille, "Vote Stamps Out Hopes of Chen's Constitution," Financial
Times, August 24, 2004.

20. John Burton, "Singapore Warns Taipei on Independence," Financial Times,
August 22, 2004.

21. "Taiwan Says No to New Mandate," CNN.com, December 12, 2004; Australian
Broadcasting Corporation, "Pro-China Parties Win Majority in Taiwan Election,"
December 12, 2004.; Caroline Gluck, "Taiwan's Controversial Arms Deal," BBC
News, October 27, 2004; Nicholas Kralev, "Election Results Threaten U.S. Arms
Agreement," Washington Times, December 16, 2004.

22. Robert E. Bedeski, "Taiwan's Cross-Strait Relations: A Human Security
Approach," Taipei: Foundation on International and Cross-Strait Studies, January
27, 2005.

23. "KMT in League with Beijing over Flights," Taipei Times, January 11, 2005;
Stephan Grauwels, "Taiwan Open for Unification with China," Associated Press,
February 24, 2005; Kathrin Hille, "Chen and Opposition Leader Agree to Relax
Restrictions on Ties with China," Financial Times, February 25, 2005; Edward
Cody, "China Proposes Business, Travel Links to Taiwan," Washington Post,
February 26, 2005.

24. Bedeski, op. cit., develops this model further.

25. See Ted Galen Carpenter, "President Bush's Muddled Policy on Taiwan," CATO
Institute, Foreign Policy Briefing, No. 82, March 15, 2004.

26. On the Republican convention, see Agence France Presse, "GOP to Hold the
Line in Region," The Australian, September 1, 2004. On Operation Summer Pulse
'04, see Chalmers Johnson, "Sailing Toward a Storm in China: U.S. Maneuvers
Could Spark a War," Los Angeles Times, July 15, 2004.

27. Laurence Eyton, "Taiwan Reels from Powell's Anti-sovereignty 'Goof,'" Asia
Times, October 30, 2004.

28. Edwin Alden, "CIA Chief Warns on Chinese Military Threat," Financial Times,
February 17, 2005; "U.S. Signals Hard Line on China Military Threat," Financial
Times, February 20, 2005; Conn Hallinan, "Cornering the Dragon: Bad Idea,"
Antiwar.com, February 26, 2005.

29. Kosuke Takahashi, "China 'Threat' Strengthens U.S.-Japan Military Ties,"
Asia Times, January 13, 2005; Anthony Faiola, "Japan to Join U.S. Policy on
Taiwan," Washington Post, February 18, 2005; Agence France Presse, "Japan Flexes
Its Military Muscle with U.S. Applauding from Behind," February 19, 2005; "U.S.,
Japan Talk About Taiwan's Safety," Taipei Times, February 20, 2005; Jim Yardley
and Keith Bradsher, "China Accuses U.S. and Japan of Interfering on Taiwan," New
York Times, February 21, 2005: Jing-dong Yuan, "China Seethes at U.S.-Japan
'Meddling,'" Asia Times, February 24, 2005; Antoaneta Bezlova, "China, U.S. Ever
at Loggerheads over Taiwan," Asia Times, February 26, 2005.

30. See, inter alia, Chalmers Johnson, Review of Sterling and Peggy Seagrave,
Gold Warriors: America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold, in London Review
of Books, November 20, 2003, pp. 3-6; "'Rape of Nanjing' Comic Draws Ire,"
Reuters, October 14, 2004; Anthony Faiola, "Scandals Force Out Japanese TV
Chief: Critics Say Network Bowed to Pressure to Soften Controversial WWII
Program," Washington Post, January 26, 2005.

31. Norimitsu Onishi, "Ad Man-Turned-Priest Tackles His Hardest Sales Job," New
York Times, February 12, 2005; David Pilling, "Unbowed: Koizumi's Assertive
Japan Is Standing Up Increasingly to China," Financial Times, February 14, 2005.

32. Yoshibumi Wakamiya, "Zero Fighters in Chongqing and Pearl Harbor; Yasukuni's
War Criminals as Martyrs?" Japan Focus, December 6, 2004; Koji Uemura, Mayumi
Otani, and Yudai Nakazawa, "Chinese Soccer Fans' Jeering at Japanese," Mainichi
Shimbun (Tokyo), August 6, 2004; Jim Yardley, "In Soccer Loss, A Glimpse of
China's Rising Ire at Japan," New York Times, August 9, 2004.

33. See BBC News, "Harry Says Sorry for Nazi Costume," January 13, 2005.

34. "'Japan's ODA [Official Developmental Assistance] Not Necessary,' says
Chinese Premier," Sankei Shimbun (Tokyo), December 3, 2004; "In Meeting with
Koizumi, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao asked, 'Do You Know How Many People Died in
the War with Japan?'" Sankei Shimbun (Tokyo), December 4, 2004; Japan Focus,
December 6, 2004, op. cit. ; Wenren Jiang, "China's 'New Thinking' on Japan,"
Jamestown Foundation, China Brief Vol. 5, No. 3 (February 1, 2005); Hiroyuki
Akita, "Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Expresses Concern to Rumsfeld over Japan's
Security Policy," Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Tokyo), January 18, 2005; Alan Dupont,
Unveiling the Samurai Sword, op. cit. ; James Brooke, "The Dragon for Trade, the
Eagle for Safety: Japan Rebuilds Its U.S. Alliance and Starts Standing Up to
China," New York Times, February 6, 2005; Agence France Presse, "Japan Raises
Submarine Issue with China," November 12, 2004; Michiyo Nakamoto, "Sino-Japanese
Relations Enter Choppy Waters," Financial Times, November 16, 2004.

35. "China to Replace U.S. as No. 1 Japan Trading Partner," Asia Times, August
24, 2004; James Brooke, New York Times, February 6, 2005, op. cit .


36. Eamonn Fingleton, "The Sun & the Dragon," American Conservative, August 2,
2004, p. 9.

37. Tony Karon, "Why Europe Ignores Bush," Time, February 21, 2005.

38. "Japan, Iran Reach Agreement on Development of Azadegan Oil Field," Nihon
Keizai Shimbun (Tokyo) , February 19, 2004; "Azadegan Oil Field," Asahi Shimbun
(Tokyo), February 19, 2004; "U.S. Traded Iran Oil Deal for SDF [Self-Defense
Forces] in Iraq: Democrat," Japan Times, April 1, 2004.

39. "China, Iran Sign Biggest Oil & Gas Deal," Xinhuanet (Beijing), October 30,
2004; Kaveh Afrasiabi, "China Rocks the Geopolitical Boat," Asia Times, November
6, 2004; Chietigj Bajpaee, "China Fuels Energy Cold War," Asia Times, March 2,
2005.

40. Antoaneta Bezlova, "China-Iran Tango Threatens U.S. Leverage," Antiwar.com,
November 26, 2004.

41. Matthew Clark, "Is EU Choosing China over U.S.?" Christian Science Monitor,
February 24, 2005.

42. Roy Eccleston, "Arms Sales to China Rattle U.S," The Australian, February
26, 2005.

43. Daniel Dombey and Peter Spiegel, "Up in Arms: Why Europe is Ready to Defy
the U.S. and Lift its Weapons Ban on China," Financial Times, February 10, 2005.

44. Agence France Presse, "China's Military Buildup Raises Concerns in U.S.,"
April 25, 2004; Thom Shanker and David E. Sanger, "U.S. Lawmakers Warn Europe on
Arms Sales to China," New York Times, March 2, 2005; Raphael Minder, "China's
Focus on Galileo Pinpoints U.S. Security Fears," Financial Times, February 24,
2005; "U.S. Calls for Beijing Rethink over Law Triggering War against Taiwan,"
Financial Times, March 9, 2005.

45. Greg Sheridan, "PM Defies Bush over China Arms," The Australian, February
12, 2005.

46. Raymond Colitt and Adam Thomson, "Beijing 'Aims for $20bn Trade' as Brazil
Conceded on Dumping," Financial Times, November 16, 2004; Richard Lapper,
"Increase of Trade Reveals Beijing's Growing Profile in Latin America,"
Financial Times , March 9, 2005.

47. BBC News, "Venezuela and China Sign Oil Deal," December 24, 2004.

48. Edward Cody, "China's Quiet Rise Casts Wide Shadow," Washington Post,
February 26, 2005.

49. Yoichi Funabashi, "Acceleration of Regionalism in Asia," Asahi Shimbun
(Tokyo), December 9, 2004.

50. "High-level U.S. Official Critical About East Asia Summit Conference Due to
'Exclusion of U.S,'" Yomiuri Shimbun (Tokyo), December 1, 2004.

51. Chalmers Johnson, An Instance of Treason: Ozaki Hotsumi and the Sorge Spy
Ring (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990), p. 5.

--
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