Japan and China take regional spat to world stage

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Tokyo and Beijing have been exchanging diplomatic broadsides in recent months over the disputed Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, and their historically frosty relationship only got worse when Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe visited a controversial shrine to the former Empire’s war dead last week. But now the neighbors seem to be jockeying for international favor, Japan taking its case to Europe and China preferring to petition the United Nations. After all, there are only so many domestic political points to be scored by sticking it to the national arch-rival on television. Abe’s conservative government clearly does not want to be seen as overstepping its bounds, thus balancing the premier’s hawkish reorientation of Japanese policy — and the expansion of its previously dormant military in particular — with renewed calls for a direct hotline that might help leaders in both countries avoid any kind of disastrous incident. Chinese assertiveness, likewise tied to a shakeup in leadership (and specifically the elevation of Xi Jinping to the top of the Communist Party hierarchy), is perhaps more nuanced, but both powers seem determined not to lose the image battle in this age of social media and global news consumption.

But even if the West remains dubious of China’s political system and its half-hearted embrace of modern capitalism, there are reasons to believe it is Japan that will struggle in selling allies on this new direction. Certainly, European nations like France are willing partners, but only because they see economic benefits to buttressing ties with Tokyo; the United States, still Japan’s single most important ally and de facto guarantor of its national security, has no desire to see the south Pacific descend into chaos. And whereas it has awfully little influence over Xi, the Obama White House can still get Abe on the line whenever it pleases. The onus will likely be on Japan, then — which continues to pay a price in the battle for public opinion for its human rights violations in the 1930s and 40s — to step back from the precipice sooner or later, especially with scions of the Chinese business community suggesting they will not do business with the Japanese until this regional dispute is settled. On the other hand, so long as Abe’s rhetoric fails to torpedo his approval numbers at home, it would be behoove him to avoid looking like the United States’ lapdog. Indeed, his very political identity depends on lingering nationalist sentiment and a desire to see the once-glorious Empire regain at least a modicum of that prior greatness.