Yi Tengang: Sino-American-Japanese Relations Are At a Turning Point

Without the influence of the United States, Asia’s stability and flourishing development would be unimaginable. America’s influence does not only depend on the overwhelming superiority of its national power, but has also originated structurally from poor relations between China, the U.S. and Japan.

America has always differentiated its policy formulation towards China and Japan but has consistently not attached importance to the concept of “East Asia.” It can be said; no matter if America is deliberately doing so, that a sense of distance between China and Japan has always existed at the structural level.

In Asia, America’s strategy to preserve superiority is to seek every type of reason to separate the Asian region. Asian countries have had antagonistic ideologies and “historical” problems from time to time that cause antagonism. America has always deliberately bypassed these issues to intervene in Asian affairs. Now, the cold war has already ended but the communist system remains. Past historical problems are also hampering Asian cooperation in development. In the past, the phrase “cold politics, hot economy” was popular. The level of economic cooperation certainly has risen, but economic relations have not developed to the extent of leading to political cooperation.

The trends of “unification,” “integration” and “summit meeting organization” have emerged in East Asia, which are in the process of transforming the status quo of the region. As such, America continuously has misgivings toward the proposition that East Asia become an “integrated community.” By becoming an “integrated community,” it can shake off the superiority in the region America has maintained until now. Opposition in the Sino-Japanese bilateral relationship is maintained to a certain extent and the Korean Peninsula crisis still exists. These factors inevitably cause people to conclude that America must maintain its presence in Asia for a while longer.

In addition, there is still significant evidence that America is allying with Japan to enlarge their geographical range of influence. Corresponding to China’s “ASEAN + China, Japan and Korea,” Japan is attempting to build an “ASEAN + China, Japan and Korea + India, Australia and New Zealand” structure. Japan’s proposal has brought countries with similar interests as America into a “community,” thus the U.S. is also actively striving to increase membership of this organization.

Moreover, America is starting to put effort into giving APEC and similar organizations a new shine and vitality. These organizations were given importance during the early stages of President Clinton’s administration but afterwards were overshadowed. In other words, America thinks that as long as the Asian community preserves a structure without substance and maintains the status quo with a mere skeleton frame and only exist to hold meetings for participants at fixed intervals, America’s interests can stand firm.

Though the Obama administration has indicated it values relations with Japan, in the wake of China’s growing great power status, high level Sino-American meetings to discuss tremendous changes taking place and positive discussions between the two sides about global problems such as climate change, the energy and trade disequilibrium and other problems. Of course, when President Obama is talking about China, he will still directly or indirectly refer to China’s human rights and ethnic minority issues, which, as before, are left out of the Chinese media. Clearly, in terms of differences in the political system and political values, China and America are still unable to bridge this gap.

It has been 30 years since China’s reforms and opening to the outside world, but Sino-Japanese-American trilateral relations are now in a state of great transition. This year, China’s GDP is about to surpass Japan’s. China’s foreign exchange reserves and holdings of American Treasury bonds exceed Japan’s. Previously, Sino-Japanese relations gave people the impression of “Moneybags Japan” and “Developing China” in a kind of “brotherly relation,” yet the great changes occurring now will turn the relationship into one of reciprocity. In short, the flying geese paradigm in East Asia has already died a natural death. Japan’s role as the pacesetter of East Asia in economic development has already vanished into the distance.