Mr. Hu's relentlessly upbeat visit

Chinese President Hu Jintao will leave Japan Saturday after a five-day visit, a visit that the Chinese Communist Party's external relations bureau has described as a "great success."

(Photo from the Office of the Prime Minister)

It is hard to dispute that, as far as symbolism goes, the visit was indeed a success. Mr. Hu and Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo showed that the relationship is on an even keel, and Mr. Hu, by staying longer in Japan than in any other country (a meaningful statement considering his relentless globe trotting), showed Japan that China still finds value in a close relationship with its wealthier (for now) neighbor. The two leaders reaffirmed the "strategic, reciprocal relationship" approach to Sino-Japanese relations developed during Abe Shinzo's premiership.

In a joint statement, the two leaders agreed to a five-point program to enhance peaceful cooperation between Japan and China: (1) political confidence-building measures, including annual summits between heads of state and government, exchanges between parties and legislatures, and high-level visits and talks in the security realm; (2) cultural and personal exchanges; (3) reciprocal cooperation in the areas of energy and the environment, trade, finance, investment, and other economic sectors, continuation of the high-level economic dialog, and making the East China Sea a sea of "peace, cooperation, and friendship;" (4) cooperation in East Asia, including a commitment to the six-party process, with China welcoming normalization of Japanese-North Korea relations following resolution of "various problems," and the realization of an East Asian region grounded in openness, transparency, and inclusiveness; and (5) cooperation to resolve global problems and combat global warming, energy shortages, and infectious diseases (for China this latter effort starts at home).

As one might expect, there is little of substance in the joint agreement. MOFA has provided a list of concrete steps that will be taken in the coming months, but for the most part these are limited to scheduled summit meetings, visits, and exchanges. I'm certainly not complaining about that — the more interaction between the two governments and peoples, the better — but this week's summitry was more about "agreeing to pursue agreement" and establishing a new framework for Sino-Japanese relations than reaching substantive agreement on the real issues that haunt the bilateral agenda.

Reading the transcript of the joint press conference with Mr. Hu and Mr. Fukuda held on Wednesday, it is clear that both governments worked hard to keep the tone positive. The only reference to bilateral history was Mr. Hu's noting that "there are more than 2,000 years of history of friendly interaction between the peoples of Japan and China." The prevailing, tacit agreement in Sino-Japanese — and now, under President Lee Myung-bak, Japanese-South Korean — relations seems to be that all governments concerned will follow the Basil Fawlty line: "Don't mention the war." Unpleasantness over Tibet and poisoned gyoza was dispatched with ease in questioning; indeed, Mr. Hu, questioned about discussions with the Dalai Lama's representatives before the summit, drew a hard line, stating that it is now the responsibility of the Dalai Lama's "side" to forswear violence, separatist activities, and efforts to wreck the Olympics. The two leaders remained focused largely on enhanced political and economic times.

It is worth noting the difference in Japanese and Chinese visions. Mr. Fukuda spoke largely of the bilateral relationship; Mr. Hu spoke of the bilateral relationship, but embedded it in a regional and global context. In his remarks at the press conference, Mr. Hu spoke frequently of mechanisms for bilateral and regional cooperations. Wannabe dragon slayers may think that talk by Chinese officials about multilateral cooperation is a ploy to disarm potential enemies, but I think that may be overly cynical. China clearly recognizes the value of regional institutions, even with Japanese involvement (that might dilute China's power within said institutions). Judging by this summit, there is an appreciation in Beijing that it is better to placate Japan and have it play a constructive role in the region than to have an embittered Japan drawn to fantasies of containing China. The China on display at the joint press conference was a confident regional leader dedicated to creating a new East Asian order — hence there was no mention of the US (or Taiwan) by either leader.

There is nothing the US can or should do about this: Japan needs stable, cordial relations with both the US and China. Indeed, perhaps the more Japan undertakes initiatives outside the US-Japan alliance, the healthier the alliance will become, as Japan will feel less obligated to do Washington's bidding for lack of other options.

The question now is whether this approach is sustainable within Japan. For months now, the LDP's ideological conservatives and their allies in the media have been hammering Mr. Fukuda for being soft on China, especially in regard to Tibet and the poisoned gyoza issue. The "True Conservative Policy Research Group," the seat of the conservative ideologues within the LDP, has been particularly relentless in its criticism of Mr. Fukuda.

In a Mainichi article reviewing the group's opposition to Mr. Fukuda's China policy, one member is quoted as saying, "China policy will be one important theme in the next party president election. If Mr. Aso enters the presidential election, most of the members will shift their support to him." This last line is not particularly surprising — I've assumed from the beginning that Nakagawa Shoichi's study group is at least in part a committee to elect Aso Taro — but this article as a whole shows that the conservative approach to China remains bankrupt. The conservatives still have nothing constructive to offer. They would still rather harangue China for its failings than outline a way forward.

While Mr. Abe's overtures to China suggest that a conservative prime minister can still pursue a positive relationship with China, I fear that an Aso government — particularly an Aso government accompanied by a McCain administration calling for a League of Nations Democracies — would be considerably less forward-looking in its China policy. Mr. Aso might not necessarily return Sino-Japanese relations to the Koizumi-era deep freeze, although a glance at this speech he gave in 2006 on Yasukuni, in which he fails to mention the enshrined Class-A war criminals, suggests that Mr. Aso might have a devastating impact on the latest Sino-Japanese rapprochement; Mr. Aso and his comrades will most likely not embrace the Fawlty line. With Mr. Fukuda enfeebled and Mr. Aso positioning himself to take the premiership, there may yet be bumps ahead, sooner rather than later.

That said, I suspect that over the long term, the ability of China hawks in both Japan and the US to freeze or rollback cooperative ventures with China will be limited, provided that Beijing continues to talk about cooperative mechanisms and regional order. The challenge is making it to the long term with the least amount of backsliding due to agitation by conservatives.

UPDATE: Perhaps as part of the ongoing process of reinventing himself, Mr. Aso praised the talks as being effective on the tainted gyoza problem.

Finessing China

In the midst of rising tensions between the US and China, Japan and China held a ministerial-level strategic economic dialogue akin to those held between the US and China and the US and Australia, a timely reminder of what's at stake.

The summit did not produce much in the way of concrete results, much to Amaki Naoto's consternation. The two governments agreed to cooperate on green technology, and Foreign Ministers Yang and Komura made resolution of the East China Sea gas fields dispute a priority for Prime Minister Fukuda's visit at month's end.

Amaki is particularly mad because Japan has lagged behind the US and European countries in pursuing these ties with China, despite historical and geographic links. He suggests that the reason is that "there lurks in the hearts of some Japanese a stubborn feeling of contempt for China."

Whatever the reason, Japan cannot afford to wait any longer, and this is a positive step, even if the concrete results were limited. With visits by both Mr. Ozawa and Mr. Fukuda in the coming weeks, perhaps more progress will be made — maybe the two will even coordinate on how Japan should deal with China.

The point is that the mutually beneficial economic relationships enjoyed by Japan, the US, Australia, and just about every other country that trades with China will not be sustainable over the long term without institutionalized interactions among governments not just on economic matters, but in the security realm as well. A stable, orderly security environment is needed not just as an end in itself, but as a buttress for the emerging economic order in the Asia-Pacific.

Trust — from either side — will not grow overnight, and there will be setbacks (i.e., the current naval dispute). But the alternative is undesirable. So should the US and its allies continue to hedge and strengthen their alliances? Of course. But they should avoid the crusading rhetoric that carries the unmistakable whiff of encirclement and they should put as much effort into establishing a viable security organization that includes China as they do into strengthening existing bilateral alliances, even as they pursue economic cooperation in bilateral and multilateral settings.

This approach will take finesse on the part of the US and its allies. The Bush administration, for all its lack of finesse in other areas, has actually done this reasonably well in recent years. It was Prime Minister Abe's, not President Bush's, rhetoric that threatened to undermine this balanced approach — and it was Prime Minister Koizumi who sent Sino-Japanese relations into a deep freeze. Both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Pacific Command have worked to cultivate relationships with the PLA. And the administration has managed to avoid the temptation of playing to the anti-China crowd at home on the economic front.

But should Washington falter, the task of managing this balanced approach will have to be shouldered by Mr. Fukuda and the new bridge builder in Canberra, as they try to coax both the US and China to contribute to the creation of regularized, if not always harmonious, relations in Asia.

Waiting for Wen

It seems that today is a China kind of day, as Chinese Premier Wen begins his three-day visit to Japan today.

The much-quoted purpose of this trip is to "melt the ice" between Japan and China.

Call me a skeptic, but I think I'm with the Carnegie Endowment's Minxin Pei, who wrote in an op-ed in the FT (subscription required), "...It would be naive to see the improvement in atmosphere between Tokyo and Beijing as a substantive step towards removing tensions between the two countries. Few detect a fundamental shift in either’s policy. Neither China nor Japan has made real concessions on key bilateral disputes."

I'm not all that convinced that negotiated solutions to many of the bilateral issues between China and Japan are possible, seeing as how they're rooted in the region's changing power dynamics. Let's not forget the insecurity that China's emergence spurs in Japan, even as interdependence between them grows.

But, that said, it is as imperative -- or more imperative -- for Japan to talk with China as it is for the US to talk with China. Regular Sino-Japanese summits -- with or without concrete progress -- have value in and of themselves; stability in the region depends on open communication within the US-China-Japan strategic triangle, and given the issues between Tokyo and Beijing, the Sino-Japanese leg of the triangle may be the most important.

Such is life in multipolar Asia, where every day brings another initiative to enhance communication and cooperation.