Senkaku islands row reflects broader tensions between China and Japan

Experts say chances of head-on collision between the world's second and third biggest economies are growing

Simon Tisdall in Tokyo

The potentially explosive struggle between China and Japan for physical control of the energy-rich Senkaku islands in the East China Sea reflects broader security, ideological and historical tensions between the two east Asian leviathans, the world's second and third biggest economies respectively, which could yet produce a head-on collision, Japanese officials and analysts say.

According to a senior government adviser, the security situation in the east Asian region has begun to resemble Europe in the 1930s, when a resurgent, re-arming Germany began to project its power beyond its borders.

China's declared defence budget has expanded five times over in 10 years to $102bn (£63bn) in 2012, almost double Japan's, the adviser said. For its part, Tokyo says it wants to talk, but is busily boosting its military and security capabilities and alliances.

"China tries to present a smile to the world but it will always revert to bullying when it suits it," the adviser said. "They have bigger guns and bigger money than us, but they can't lead. They have no vision for the world … Integrating China into the global mainstream is the biggest challenge of this century. I hope they will be like us one day. But it may not happen."

Yoshiji Nogami of the Japan Institute of International Affairs said European governments and businesses were failing to appreciate or understand the extremely high levels of instability in east Asia, partly because of "wishful thinking" arising from a desire to profit from China's vast markets.

"The US-Japan security alliance is expanding in scope in the South China Sea, not only in the East China Sea. The Australians and the Indians are getting involved, too, so if things deteriorate further, it potentially gets very dramatic," Nogami said.

"China is not going to back off. It views the East China Sea as a core interest. But so too does the US forward-deployed navy and Japan. So how do we manage this clash of core interests? I think the situation can ultimately be managed, but for the next decade or more the atmosphere will be very uncomfortable."

Officials complained that like its predecessors, China's new leadership under its president, Xi Jinping, was willing to whip up residual anti-Japanese sentiment to distract attention from the country's severe social and economic problems. Portraying Japan as a threat also served the People's Liberation Army, which used it to justify increased weapons budgets.

Following acceptance of his "reform" programme at the Communist party's central committee plenum earlier this month, Xi was emerging as the strongest Chinese leader since Deng Xiaoping (who died in 1997), the officials said.

His approach to external (as well as internal) security and defence issues was uncompromising, and on occasion confrontational, the officials said.

There is deep frustration in Tokyo that Beijing does not give more weight to Japanese support for China's development. "There are 20,000 Japanese companies investing in China, mostly in manufacturing, employing 10 million Chinese workers," a senior official said. Two-way trade was very important for both countries, but China's behaviour often jeopardised it, and Japanese businesses were beginning to look elsewhere.

"Japan and China have tremendous communication problems," said Yuji Miyamoto, a former Japanese ambassador to Beijing, pointing to China's suspicions over what it views as reviving nationalism in Japan under conservative prime minister Shinzo Abe. "There is no dialogue at present. Neither leader has an incentive to deal. We need a confidence-building process," he said.

"It is too early to say whether China is a threat to Japan. There are conflicting currents [in the Beijing leadership]. One group definitely wants a superpower position in the world. Other groups say China needs co-operative relationships. I don't know which way it will go. But Japan and the international community still have time to influence China's decision."

For Japan, the unstable outlook in east Asia is compounded by uncertainty over the unpredictable behaviour of nuclear-armed North Korea.

"If Kim [Jong-un, the North Korean dictator] goes crazy, he could blow up everything. Tokyo would collapse," the senior government adviser said. Japan's relations with South Korea are also at a low point, poisoned by renewed recriminations over second world war legacies.

For all these reasons, Miyamoto said, the US-Japan alliance was more important than ever. "We need a long-term regional security framework. But we need the US more, until such a framework can safeguard every country. Because, at present, the situation is so fragile, so unstable, so insecure."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/27/senkaku-islands-broader-tensions-china-japan