Japan vs China, Is North Korea the Wild Card?

Japan-China tensions rise over tiny islands | csmonitor.com

In a sign of deepening popular and political animosity between China and Japan, Tokyo took formal possession this week of a tiny archipelago in the Pacific waters south of Japan. In the early morning of Feb. 9, Tokyo informed Beijing's embassy here that the Senkaku Islands would be administered by the Japanese coast guard.


The unexpectedly bold action by Tokyo received little attention here. But it is seen as a "serious chess move," says one diplomat, in a region where power relations are being redefined, and where tensions over energy, borders, military buildups, and ethnic rivalries are palpable. In Asia, drawing clear lines around territories that may hold oil and gas, is rare; Japan's move takes place amid a dispute with China over what constitutes legitimate zones of energy exploration in open seas.

Things seem to be heating up in the Asia Pacific. Japan is making aggressive moves against an increasingly belligerent China. In addition to seizing the disputed islands much closer to Taiwan than Japan, Japan is on a long range military build-up.
China meantime has been stirring up a war fever among its people about mistreatment from the Japanese during WWII. Meanwhile on their southwestern flank, Inda is a booming nuclear power that also sees China as a threat.
China would seem to need some friends in their neighborhood. Russia and China will be engaging in unprecedented military manuvers. Russia is another traditional rival of Japan. North Korea has been another traditional ally of China. While it seems clear that China would not want to rescue North Korea in another military adventure, they could use North Korea's aggressiveness and apparent unpredictability in their favor. China has the West apparently convinced that they will reign in their incorrigible neighbor:

North Korea's Fearmongering | csmonitor.com China can't afford to let Japan react and go nuclear, or further push the US to set up a missile-defense shield. If Beijing really believes the North has the bomb, it will act now.

Frankly I don't believe world events will persuade a security obcessed US from backing off a missile shield. And whether Japan goes nuclear or not, they are clearly under the US nuclear umbrella. The threat is the same one way or another.
Why would China give up a wildcard? They might calm the situation just to stoke the fire when its in their interest. I see no benefit to China that might induce them to stop North Korea from joining the nuclear club. If Japan and China ever do come to blows, North Korea's invasion of the South would necessarily limit the US ability to come to the aid of Japan. All of this is many years off. First China has to counter the US dominance of the skies.

Japan-China | North Korea
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0211/p01s03-woap.html
Japan-China tensions rise over tiny islands
Japan took possession of disputed Senkakus Feb. 9.
By Robert Marquand | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
TOKYO - In a sign of deepening popular and political animosity between China and Japan, Tokyo took formal possession this week of a tiny archipelago in the Pacific waters south of Japan. In the early morning of Feb. 9, Tokyo informed Beijing's embassy here that the Senkaku Islands would be administered by the Japanese coast guard.
The unexpectedly bold action by Tokyo received little attention here. But it is seen as a "serious chess move," says one diplomat, in a region where power relations are being redefined, and where tensions over energy, borders, military buildups, and ethnic rivalries are palpable. In Asia, drawing clear lines around territories that may hold oil and gas, is rare; Japan's move takes place amid a dispute with China over what constitutes legitimate zones of energy exploration in open seas.
While economic ties between "China Inc." and "Japan Inc." are warming and integrating, political feelings between China and Japan are not. The current atmosphere is "cool if not cold," a senior Japanese official says, due to a perception that China fuels "anti-Japanese sentiments" among its people, and is making "aggressive claims ... all over the Pacific."
"There is a huge disconnect between the economic and political relations of China and Japan," says Gerald Curtis, of Columbia University, on sabbatical in Tokyo. "Japanese business enthusiasm for the China economic miracle continues. But at the political level, there is no talk of integration. Rather, there is a stiffening back of nationalism in both countries."
Beijing's somewhat vague claims on the Senkakus date to the early 1980s. Chinese "activists" last year landed on one island and attacked a lighthouse, and a Chinese nuclear submarine was found in Senkaku waters that Japan claims. Chinese spokesman Kong Quan interrupted the new year holiday to describe Tokyo's formal claim as "illegal and unacceptable."
Tokyo has never acknowledged China's claim, which it says was made only after a US geological survey in the late 1970s indicated the area could contain petroleum. Moreover, under Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Japan has shed much of its pacifist identity, sent troops to Iraq, and begun a quiet campaign to reposition opinion on formerly taboo subjects like missile technology and the dangers of an Asia with a North Korean nuclear program and a confident, wealthier China.
"We needed to remove the question that Senkaku was in some way a dispute," says Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hatsuhisa Takeshima. "We felt this step was reasonable to avoid any physical activity that would bring harm to China-Japan relations."
According to Mr. Takeshima, the largest island, where the lighthouse is located, had been owned by a fishing family for decades. On Feb. 9, this unnamed family transferred island rights to Tokyo, which put the coast guard in charge. No one - Japanese or foreign - may visit the island.
Japan is the world's second-largest economy, has a huge savings rate, and a large educated middle class. Yet China, with 1.3 billion people, cheap labor, and a policy of market competition, has become the world's seventh-largest economy. In the past year, China has superseded Japan as America's largest trading partner.
The new circumstances concern Japan and deepens sentiments of fear and patriotism.
China plans to send a manned spacecraft into orbit this fall, something Japan has never attempted. China's military prowess is growing, though it has limited capability to project power conventionally.
China's hot economy makes it a major oil importer; concern over energy security has prompted China to cut recent energy deals in Canada, South America, and with Iran.
There have been no state visits between China and Japanese leaders in this century. Chinese point to Mr. Koizumi's regular visits to the Yasakuni Shrine in Tokyo, where a number of Japanese war criminals are buried. For three generations, Koizumi's family has represented in the Diet the district that includes the headquarters of the Japanese Navy. "He's bred to a traditional view of Japanese patriotism and to a school among younger Japanese that the nation should no longer be bossed around by others," says a diplomat.
Yet much ill will between China and Japan stems from intense jockeying over potential energy fields in "EEZs," or exclusive economic zones. Japan sticks with a UN Law of the Sea definition of EEZs as being 200 miles from shore; China defines an EEZ as starting from the edge of the submerged continental shelf.
Last year a Chinese submarine cruised into Senkaku waters. Beijing said it was unintentional. Yet Japanese requests that China issue corrective measures to its submarine captains have not been honored, officials here say.
Last year, the US State Department said it would back up any Japanese security claim on the Senkakus. After World War II, at the San Francisco peace treaty, a line was drawn in the Pacific that was regarded as giving the Senkakus to Okinawa, which for many years was administered by a UN high commissioner. The Senkakus had been and still are often used by the US as practice grounds for bombing runs.
In 1972, Okinawa was returned to Japan. Shortly thereafter, Beijing made a preliminary claim. When Japanese diplomats visiting Beijing in the mid-1980s asked for a clarification, Deng Xiaoping called the issue a "dispute," and recommended it be resolved in the future. Tokyo objected to what it saw as a device to grab territory by declaring it disputed.
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Beijing counts cost of supporting an embarrassing old friend - World - www.smh.com.au "In the eyes of many people in China, had there not been the Korean War and China's forced involvement, there would not have existed a Taiwan question today," said Xiao Ren of the Shanghai Institute for International Studies in a paper read to Western scholars in December. The nuclear crisis that erupted when Washington confronted the North Koreans about an alleged secret uranium enrichment program in October 2002 came as a huge shock to Beijing. As North Korea withdrew from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and started up nuclear bomb-making efforts, Beijing canvassed many options. As the Herald reported in July 2003, one was the feasibility of a pre-emptive strike to halt any North Korean attack on South Korea. As the crisis developed through the first half of 2003, new committees in the Chinese Foreign Ministry and Communist Party fell back on the present diplomatic approach that combines tough threats and offers of help for Kim Jong-il in getting his regime out of its economic and political corner.
North Korea's Fearmongering | csmonitor.com China can't afford to let Japan react and go nuclear, or further push the US to set up a missile-defense shield. If Beijing really believes the North has the bomb, it will act now.

Times Online - Comment The regime of Kim Jong Il may not have intended to make life more difficult for Beijing, but it has surely done so. China's stance throughout has been that it opposes a nuclear-armed Korean peninsula, but that since it was unclear whether North Korea was even close to the point of developing actual nuclear weapons, the US and Japan should have the patience to fall in with China's preferred strategy of gradual engagement. Only last week, US envoys were in Beijing to show the Chinese evidence of a North Korean sale of a uranium compound to Libya, and to deliver a letter, from George W. Bush to President Hu Jintao, speaking of "the greatly heightened urgency" of tackling the problem. Now that Pyongyang itself has made that case, Beijing must have been thankful yesterday that the Chinese new year holiday excused it from early comment. Speculation on North Korea's motives is, as Condoleezza Rice observed yesterday, a thankless occupation. On occasions North Korea has resorted to particularly belligerent rhetoric with the aim of pushing up the price of its attendance at a further round of talks; and China has played its game, bribing North Korea heavily with oil, grain and other supplies merely to turn up. But the regime's hand is weaker now; and there is increasing, although fragmentary, evidence that it is also bitterly split. Among the six, there is closer agreement between the US and Japan on making Pyongyang sweat for its intransigence. New Japanese maritime insurance laws could all but stop trade and remittances to North Korea. The US is adamant that it will not reward bad behavior -- and this is spectacularly bad behavior. China could bring North Korea to a standstill tomorrow if it cut off oil supplies, and knows well how close its economy is to the edge. North Korea is now extremely vulnerable to pressure. China must apply it.