Tag: United States

This NK News article makes a really good argument that the Chinese government has no creditability to complain about Japanese World War II historical revisionism when they themselves have made laughable historical revisionist claims about their involvement in the Korean War.  Here is an excerpt, but I recommend reading the whole thing:

Finally, there is a museum titled the “Commemorative Museum of the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid North Korea.” It has exhibits on how South Korea, in collusion with the United States, started the war, how the U.S. made use of germ warfare, and how American POWs held by the Chinese and North Koreans were treated humanely according to the Geneva Convention – including photos of a “Santa Claus” handing out care packages to POWs from the Red Cross. (This contrasts sharply to the reports of POWs repatriated after the war concerning their brutal and inhumane treatment, as documented in U.S. Senate Report No. 848, 83^rd Congress, Second Session – Korean War Atrocities.)

Xi Jinping, in his 2010 speech, repeated the dubious claim presented at the museum of the use of germ warfare by U.S forces when he said: “Thereafter, the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army constructed an impregnable defense bastion and crushed the enemy’s multiple attacks and their germ warfare.”

In conclusion, the assertion by Xi Jinping in his 2010 remarks that Harry Truman started the Korean War is directly contradicted by the Yeltsin documents. It is thus as controversial as the claim of non-coercion of Comfort Women made in the past by Japanese Prime Minister Abe. Yet, while Abe’s intemperate remarks have caused criticism throughout South Korean society, there is almost no public outcry over Xi’s condemnation of the American president. Yet Truman was one of the leaders of the UN coalition which laid the groundwork for a viable and independent South Korean state.  [NK News]

Read the rest at the link.

It will be interesting to see what comes out of this.  I am willing to bet there won’t be much coming out of this publicly, but behind the scenes a few issues will probably be worked out:

South Korean and Japanese defense chiefs are expected to hold bilateral talks later this month for the first time in four years despite soured ties over historical rows, government sources here said Tuesday.

Defense Minister Han Min-koo plans to meet with his Japanese counterpart Gen Nakatani around the end of this month in Singapore on the sidelines of the regional security forum, the Shangri-La Dialogue, according to a source. The upcoming annual security forum is slated for May 29-31.

If held, it will be the first bilateral talks between the top defense officials in four years, as they have shunned such meetings due to deteriorated bilateral relations over history-related issues, including Japan’s refusal to apologize for its wartime atrocities.

Icy Seoul-Tokyo relations have taken a turn for the worse in recent months after the Abe administration renewed claims to South Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo, and attempted to deny its wrongdoing during World War II, such as the forced sexual enslavement of Asian women, mostly Korean, for its soldiers. Korea was under harsh colonial rule by Japan from 1910 to 1945.

“On the table would be issues of mutual interest including how to work closely to deter and counter North Korea’s nuclear and missiles threats and the implementation of the revised U.S.-Japan defense guidelines,” another source said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

French magazine reacts with open-mouthed wonder to American pro-gun kids' book http://t.co/8I4TsdUoJF pic.twitter.com/eTg6l9r1Z8

— Vox (@voxdotcom) May 19, 2015

It seems like if Prime Minister Abe really wanted to showcase a “New Japan” he should do more on the historical issue front, but at least he said he stood by the previous Kono Statement that offered an apology for World War II atrocities:

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe drummed up support for the new Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation in his address to a joint session of Congress Wednesday, and signaled a “New Japan” is ready to enter into a liberalizing trade agreement with the United States.

The prime minister’s speech, the first given by a Japanese leader before a joint session of Congress, praised the U.S.-Japan alliance for winning the Cold War and allowing Japan to grow and prosper.

But as the new defense pact goes into plan, Washington and Tokyo have agreed the U.S. military presence on the Japanese island of Okinawa will be diminished and relocated to places outside Japan.

According to Abe, Japan will provide up to $2.8 billion to help “improve” U.S. bases in Guam.

Tokyo, in turn, will expand its self-defense role in the Pacific to include deploying deterrence against potential missiles headed for U.S. territory, a historic reinterpretation of Japan’s pacifist constitution…………………………….

“I will uphold the views expressed by the previous prime ministers,” Abe told the joint session of Congress, indirectly referring to the 1993 Kono Statement that acknowledged the Japanese military had forced comfort women to endure sexual slavery in brothels. [UPI]

You can read more at the link.

What to Expect From Abe's US Visit http://t.co/hSSx3MBlN7 pic.twitter.com/lHGFLX0PzH

— The Diplomat (@Diplomat_APAC) April 24, 2015

It will be interesting to see how long this cooperation lasts:

Despite repeated attempts by reporters to bait him into dredging up lingering resentments against Japan, a senior South Korean diplomat bit his tongue, downplaying 70-year-old tensions at a trilateral meeting in Washington.

“Diplomacy is about trying to find a way to work together while we have healthy differences on issues,” South Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yong told reporters at the State Department on Thursday.

Cho said South Korea had not changed its stance “on the issues of history,” but understood that cooperation between Korea and Japan was “beneficial to both governments.”

The press conference played perfectly into Washington’s Asia rebalance strategy, which relies on the U.S. mediating differences between Japan and South Korea in order to better coordinate on China’s economic and military rise in the region.

“We have an extraordinary array of shared interests and that’s built on a foundation of shared values,” Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken said during the joint press conference. “That was obvious to me in conversations we had over many hours today covering an extraordinary array of issues.”  [Foreign Policy]

You can read the rest at the link, but I will get excited about cooperation when I see something more tangible happen between the two countries.

China’s AIIB and the US Reputation Risk http://t.co/tHLizY2tfg pic.twitter.com/VmBd0sNfgI

— The Diplomat (@Diplomat_APAC) April 16, 2015

How strong is the U.S.-Japan relationship? http://t.co/pnMHPI6Avf pic.twitter.com/mG7bdw76Zq

— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) April 15, 2015

U.S.-Japan defense pact likely to address Seoul's demand over collective self-defense http://t.co/nivsWw1ZAd

— Yonhap News Agency (@YonhapNews) April 9, 2015

That is what the below Diplomat article discusses which is based on a Chinese news media article:

During the Deng Xiaoping era, China’s foreign policy was characterized by the phrase “tao guang yang hui,” generally translated as “keeping a low profile.” In recent years, however, observers have begun to question whether this strategy still holds sway in Chinese diplomacy, particularly in light of Xi Jinping’s recent exhortation for China to practice “major power diplomacy.”

Chinese media just turned that debate over on its head, by positing that it’s Washington, rather than Beijing, that is entering a period of “low profile” foreign policy today.

An article in Xinhua, published online Wednesday, posits that the U.S. has turned inward and is entering its own period of tao guang yang hui. The article argues that America’s “confidence and power” to “interfere” in external affairs has weakened over the past six years, with President Barack Obama preoccupied with domestic economic development. The lede cites Obama’s philosophy of “don’t do stupid stuff” as evidence.

The piece interviews Chinese experts who agree, as Xinhua puts it, that the U.S. inward-focus is growing “more and more obvious” and that “for the last two years of Obama’s term, [the U.S.] may enter an American-style period of ‘keeping a low profile.’”

One of the experts who contributed to the debate is scholar Wang Jisi of Peking University, who notes that although the U.S. isn’t in an irreversible decline, “U.S. influence on global political affairs has obviously declined.” The reason for this, Wang says, is a combination of weakening influence and power among U.S. allies (notably in Europe and Japan) and the rise of developing countries like China. Wang and another expert, Xu Changyin of Xinhua’s own World Affairs Research Center, both argue that Obama will try to focus on internal economic issues for the remainder of his term.  [The Diplomat]

You can read the rest at the link, but one way to look at this is that the Chinese government knows that now is the time to push hard on issues of contention knowing the US will do little about it.  An example of this appears to be happening in the South China Sea where the Chinese continue to claim sovereignty over the entire sea while the US pushes allies in the region to do more.  The South China Sea issue is actually small compared to if China tries to use this time frame to push militarily on the Taiwan issue.  Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.