Fear of falling behind has a funny way of focusing the mind sometimes. Policy choices once seen as toxic become increasingly palatable to leaders when they are considered against national security. So it goes for Japan as it seeks to maintain its position in Asia and finally kickstart its perennially stalled economy in the face of a rapidly growing China.
Prime Minister Shinzō Abe announced on Friday that Japan will be joining talks to become part of a new free-trade area in the Pacific led by the United States. If Japan succeeds in joining the trade pact, it would be nothing short of a sea change for the Asian country’s domestic policy because it will need to structurally reform its economy and open its market to foreign competitors. (more…)
Japanese prime minister Shinzō Abe met with President Barack Obama in Washington on Friday for the first time since his Liberal Democratic Party won the election in December.
Abe arrived in the United States with strong domestic support. Some polls put his cabinet’s approval rating as high as 70 percent. This largely stems from budding enthusiasm for his economic policies and his commitment to protect Japanese sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands which China lays claim to.
At the top of the summit agenda, according to Japanese officials, were North Korea’s ballistic missile and nuclear weapons program as well as the situation in East Asia, i.e., Japan’s island dispute with China. (more…)
Since the Diaoyu or Senkaku Islands dispute between China and Japan reemerged last year, there’s been a tendency to identify the United States as the main beneficiary of it. The thinking is as follows: the dispute strengthens the alliance between Japan and the United States at the expense of the Sino-Japanese bilateral relationship, worsens China’s external security outlook and provides an excuse for the deployment of American armed forces to East Asia which help encircle China. As a result, China’s economic development is hampered and the stability of Communist Party rule may be threatened.
However, if the Sino-American relationship is studied at large, the impact of the islands dispute put in a global perspective and the rise of Japan’s nationalist right taken into account, the odds may not be in the United States’ favor at all. (more…)
After his Liberal Democrats won last month’s parliamentary elections, Japan’s Shinzō Abe stated that turning the economy around would be his top priority as prime minister. It is therefore not surprising that the first trip abroad by officials in his new government would be to Burma, a country considered the next frontier for foreign investment since it has adopted political and economic reforms after being virtually isolated from the world while living under decades of military rule.
Japan’s finance minister Tarō Asō arrived in Burma’s relocated capital of Naypyidaw last Thursday for meetings with Burmese president Thein Sein and announced a series of moves that amounted to Japan boosting its economic ties with Burma. Asō reaffirmed Japan’s intention of forgiving ¥300 billion ($3.4 billion) of the ¥500 billion owed by Burma that was first announced last April.
Japan will now extend a new loan to the South Asian country of ¥50 billion, the first in decades, intended for infrastructure projects and the development of Burma’s Thilawa economic zone near Yangon. The Abe government will also work with the Burmese authorities and Japanese banks to refinance the balance of the country’s outstanding debt. This will clear the way for Burma to apply for more loans and international aid. (more…)
Japanese prime minister Shinzō Abe answers questions from reporters in Tokyo, September 26 (Xinhua)
Japan’s conservative party won in convincing fashion on Sunday in parliamentary elections for the lower house, according exit polls. The elections took place against the backdrop of increasing tensions with China over disputed islands in the East China Sea, a stagnating economy unable to reinvigorate growth and a rancorous debate over the reliance on nuclear power after the 2011 Fukushima disaster.
The Liberal Democratic Party won between 275 and three hundred seats of the 480 seat lower chamber, according to preliminary polls conducted by the national public broadcaster NHK. If the results stand, it will prove to be a big increase from the 118 seats the party held before the elections. Along with the 27 to 35 seats expected to be won by their allies in the New Kōmeitō Party, the Liberal Democrats will have gained the two-thirds majority needed to override bills passed in the divided upper house.
The Liberal Democratic win means that former prime minister and right leaning Shinzō Abe is expected to get a second stint as premier. He would be the country’s eighth in the last seven years.
Until its surprise defeat in 2009, the Liberal Democratic Party was the dominant force in Japanese politics, having been in power for over fifty years.
The incumbent Democratic Party of Japan coalition is expected to win only 67 seats, down sharply from the three hundred odd seats it won in 2009 when it was swept into power in a landslide. Back then, a new era was said to be at hand in Japanese politics.
The results are a stinging rebuke to the ruling party and Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s government. Voters were upset with the party that doubled the consumption tax and failed to follow up on various campaign pledges from reforming government expenditures to relocating 8,000 United States Marines from the military base on Okinawa to Guam.
Abe is expected to push for a change in Japan’s pacifist constitution which forbids it from waging war. A big adjustment in Japan’s military posture is not seen as imminent, however, as the Japanese public has on previous occasions rejected radical changes to the Constitution that would have seen the military rearming. A more likely scenario, analysts say, would be for Abe to push for a closer alliance with the United States in the case of hostilities in East Asia.
Abe has talked of more public spending and called for a more activist policy from the Bank of Japan to simulate growth. His proposed monetary policy could result in a change to the traditional independence enjoyed by the central bank. Specifically, Abe would like to adjust the inflation target from 1 to 2 percent and increase the central bank’s interventions in the currency market to weaken the yen and stimulate exports.
The Bank of Japan has taken steps like increasing its asset purchases in recent months to reverse the deflation that has afflicted the Japanese economy since the early 1990s but its domestic critics, frustrated with the nation’s economic malaise, complain that it has not done enough.
Abe and the incoming Liberal Democrats have also talked about adopting a tougher tone with China as relations have grown rockier in the last year over disputed claims to sovereignty over the Senkaku or Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea.
China has gradually upped the ante by increasing the incursions by its maritime surveillance ships which many believe it is using to change the status quo of Japanese control over the islands. Recently, Japan scrambled fighter jets after a Chinese aircraft was detected entering Japanese airspace over the islands, widely seen as an escalation and the first time that aircraft were employed in the dispute. With Japanese business hurting on the Chinese mainland from anti-Japan protests, Abe will need to balance his tough talk with the need to maintain economic relations with China.
Finally, the Liberal Democrats are expected to embrace nuclear power more than the Democrats did to meet Japan’s domestic energy needs.
After the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident at Fukushima last year, the Democrats said that they would phase out nuclear power sometime in the 2030s. Abe has called that plan unrealistic. There remains deep ambivalence in Japanese society over nuclear power following Fukushima with many voters wanting Abe to adopt a policy like before the crisis and others in favor of what they see as safer sources of domestic power production.
Turning the economy around will be the new government’s top priority, in addition to strengthening the American alliance. Abe says he wants to improve relations with China too but it seems that the islands dispute will need to be resolved in order for that to happen.
Economic data released on Monday has raised fears of Japan falling into recession again. It would be the Asian country’s third since 2008.
Prior to the release, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda announced that he planned to pursue passage of the Trans Pacific Partnership, a multilateral free-trade pact between American and Asian nations, as well as a free-trade agreement with neighboring China and South Korea.
Noda’s support of these trade deals is speculated to be a last-ditch effort to lift the ruling Democratic Party of Japan’s sagging public approval ratings before calling lower house elections in December. He would then be able to follow through on his pledge to the opposition Liberal Democratic Party of calling elections “soon” as well as hope to generate some enthusiasm from the public. (more…)
Reflecting an increasing uneasiness with China’s growing military might, Japan’s defense minister Satoshi Morimoto on Friday said that his country is interested in revising the guidelines of its mutual defense pact with the United States.
Morimoto explained that since the last time the guidelines were revised in 1997, national security risks, like China’s maritime reach, terrorism, cyber security and instability in North Korea, have changed.
But it is the dispute with China in the East China Sea over the Senkaku or Diaoyu Islands that has raised questions about America’s security commitment to Japan should it get into a war with China. (more…)
Japan and the United States began an eleven-day joint military exercise on Monday in Northeast Asia amid rising tensions between China and Japan over disputed islands in the East China Sea and a leadership transition in China occurring in the very near future.
Heightened Sino-Japanese tensions have caused concern in the region over the Senkaku Islands with reports that Chinese surveillance ships have been monitored sailing in the areas around what Japan sees as its territorial waters for seventeen days now, according to the Japanese Coast Guard. As such, there is an increasing risk of some sort of clash occurring from a miscalculation. (more…)
Japanese prime minister Yoshihiko Noda and the main opposition parties, the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito, are locked in a game of brinkmanship over legislation to close Japan’s budget deficit of ¥38.3 trillion ($474 billion) for the rest of the year.
Unless a funding bill is agreed upon, the government will run out of money and default on its debt obligations by the end of November. At issue is the timing of elections in the lower house of parliament that Noda pledged to call after his tax bill was passed in August when the opposition provided crucial support. (more…)
In an unexpected move, the nationalist governor of Tokyo Shintaro Ishihara resigned on Thursday and announced that he will form a national political party to compete in the lower house elections that are expected to take place early next year. The wily eighty year-old politician, running with a populist message, could emerge as an important power broker and force a new political realignment in Japan.
During his news conference, Ishihara repeated his call for revising Japan’s pacifist constitution which he views as unacceptable because it was written while Japan was occupied by the United States after World War II. He also said that he wants to reform Japan’s bureaucracy “that has continued since the Meiji era” and reinstitute military conscription in order to toughen up the youth. This in addition to his controversial views on Japan’s island disputes with China and South Korea.
The two major parties, the Democratic Party of Japan and the Liberal Democratic Party, are not expected to have outright majorities after the upcoming elections and will need the support of smaller parties to form a government. Ishihara’s party could garner enough support to put it in a position to play a role in determining who assumes power in Japan’s closely contested elections. As such, Ishihara will have leverage and an opportunity to shape national policy.
Ishihara’s influence on national politics could well have profound ramifications on Japanese foreign policy and signal a shift to a more hardline stance in its relations with China and to a lesser extent South Korea. But it would also raise eyebrows with the country’s major allies in the United States.
A change to the Japanese constitution that gives the Japanese Self Defense Forces more authority to take offensive actions if necessary would undoubtedly cause concern among its neighbors who still with dread recall the Japanese occupation across Asia during the 1930s and 1940s. The United States have supported Japan taking a more proactive role in its security but would most likely oppose the army adopting a more aggressive posture in the region over fear that it will upset relations with China.
The former Tokyo governor is no stranger to controversy. His announcement last spring to purchase the Senkaku Islands from their Japanese owner in order to safeguard them and build a fishing harbor caused outrage in China. China also lays claim to the islands where they are known as the Diaoyu Islands. The Japanese government stepped in and nationalized the islands with the belief that it would be less likely to antagonize the Chinese than Ishihara’s planned purchase.
Anti-Japanese demonstrations sprang up in dozens of Chinese cities nevertheless, resulting in Japanese businesses curtailing operations and even closing their doors. Chinese surveillance ships have in turn been said to be routinely violating what Japan considers its territorial waters off the Senkakus.
Regarding South Korea, after President Lee Myung-bak made an unprecedented visit by a sitting president to the uninhabitable Takeshima Islands in August (known as the Dokdo Islands to Koreans), Japan-Korean relations have been strained.
In his announcement, Ishihara said that he would “like to offer my last service to this country.” He has been in politics for 44 years, having won a seat in the upper house in 1968 at age of 35 for the Liberal Democrats and then served in the lower house in 1972 before becoming head of the Environment Agency and transport minister. He has been Tokyo governor since 1999 as an independent.
The success of Ishihara’s new party and its populist message will be an important barometer of the direction that Japan’s government takes. The environment is ripe for a leadership change in the country as it is occurring under the backdrop of a weak economy and increasingly difficult foreign relations.
Former prime minister Shinzō Abe was elected the new leader of Japan’s main opposition Liberal Democratic Party on Wednesday. Abe is now poised to become the next premier in elections widely expected to be called in the next few months.
Abe, who defeated his rival and former defense minister Shigeru Ishiba as party leader in a runoff, served in 2006 as Japan’s prime minister for a year before resigning for personal reasons.
Abe’s reputation as a nationalist could raise apprehension in the region. Specifically, Japan’s tense relations with China and South Korea over its competing claims to the the Senkaku and Takeshima Islands respectively could worsen. (more…)
Anti-Japan protests across China intensified over the weekend as demonstrators vandalized Japanese products and businesses in more than fifty cities. With Japanese companies announcing plans to close temporarily, tensions between Asia’s two great powers mount.
The protests, coming after Japan purchased the disputed Senkaku Islands, known as Diaoyu in China, to which countries claim as sovereign territory, are believed to be the worst in years. Japan finalized a deal to purchase three of the islands from their private owner last week.
The move was likely taken to prevent tensions with China from escalating further after the outspoken governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, said that he planned to buy them for development. However, when Prime Minister Yoshiko Noda took a hardline position when he reiterated that the islands are Japanese territory, both historically and from international law, nationalists in China were outraged.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei denounced the sale as illegal and said that China would take “necessary measures” to defend its sovereignty. Soon, two Chinese surveillance ships were seen around the islands, resulting in Japan mobilizing its Coast Guard. A few days later, six Chinese surveillance vessels were reported briefly entering Japanese waters. On Monday, a flotilla of up to 1,000 Chinese fishing boats was believed to be on their way to the islands.
American defense secretary Leon Panetta was in Japan over the weekend and announced an agreement to deploy a second radar on Japanese territory in order to beef up its missile defense systems. Panetta said that the system was meant as a defense to North Korean missiles but China believes that it is pointed against it.
Panetta arrived in Beijing on Monday and was scheduled to meet with Chinese vice president and leader in waiting Xi Jinping on Wednesday.
In the meantime, Japanese companies are halting business temporarily on the mainland as a result of the protests. Canon said that it would close its factories. Honda, Mazda and Nissan announced similar measures. Sony is said to be discouraging nonessential travel to China while popular Japanese retailer Uniqlo is closing stores too.
All sides are bracing for what happens on Tuesday, the anniversary of the Manchurian Incident of September 18, 1931. On that day, Japan staged an explosion on a Japanese owned railway which led to Imperial Japan’s invasion and occupation of China.
The protests may be orchestrated by the Chinese government as part of its longtime practice of whipping up nationalism, usually against Japan, to serve its geopolitical aims. Accordingly, the authorities allow Chinese nationalists to vent their anger for a period of time before putting an end to the unrest. By preventing the demonstrations from getting out of control, they allow the public to let off some steam and keep the protests from eventually threatening the Communist Party itself.
According to Caixan, a respected Chinese newspaper, the protesters are mainly males in their twenties and thirties. Its reporter approached one of the policemen guarding the protest route and asked if it was all right to take part without a permit, which the government requires. The policeman said that it was fine since “the organizer” had a permit. But when the reporter asked if it was okay to protest about corruption in China, the policeman said no. Only protests related to the Diaoyu Islands were permitted.
Japanese prime minister Yoshihiko Noda shared with opposition lawmakers on Thursday his intention to call snap elections in November.
While the outlook is uncertain as to what party will come out on top given the public’s disgust with politics as usual, it is clear that the ruling party is in for a tough election.
The Democratic Party of Japan has suffered especially weak approval ratings since it increased the country’s sales tax in June. There is also a general perception that it has failed to follow through on its pledges to change the way politics is done in Japan.
Noda secured the support of the Liberal Democratic Party and New Kōmeitō during negotiations in early August to get his consumption tax bill through the upper house of the Diet. The conditions were that he would call elections soon though no timetable was given. (more…)
Tensions between China and Japan have flared up again after heavily publicized political stunts by nationalists over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea that both countries lay claim to.
The islands, known as Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan, continue to elicit strident nationalism among their respective populations. But these episodes are just the latest in a series of tit for tat actions across Asia that is increasing the chance of events spinning out of control and resulting in a regional conflagration. (more…)
On Friday, Japan recalled its ambassador to South Korea after President Lee Myung-bak made an unprecedented visit by a sitting president to disputed islands in the Sea of Japan. The rocky outcrop of islands, known as Dokdo in Korea and Takeshima in Japan, are claimed as sovereign territory by both governments and is believed to contain vast deposits of natural resources.
President Lee landed on one of the Dokdo islands by helicopter and stayed there for a little over an hour to eat pizza and chicken with South Korean policeman stationed in the territory.
The visit was apparently driven by domestic public opinion as the Lee Administration has been grappling with corruption scandals and accusations from the political opposition of being too pro-Japanese. (more…)
