By Andrew L. Jaffee

I almost fell off by chair when I found out that Japan, the world’s second largest economy, “…has paid out billions of dollars in yen loans for Chinese infrastructure projects over the past two decades.” Why? Fear of the 1.3 billion person gorilla just across the straits from the Japanese archipelago? Guilt over Japanese war crimes during WWII? The loans are just one piece of the puzzle of new strategic alliances being formed while old ones are being challenged — even rekindled. This seismic reshuffling confronts the security of all the democratic nations, not just Japan, and the story’s antagonists include China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia.

Having China next door must be quite disconcerting for the Japanese:

The People’s Republic of China is currently the world’s fourth largest economy in terms of market exchange rates and the second largest economy in terms of real GDP (PPP) and is considered a rising superpower due to its large and stable population, its rapidly growing economy which has an annual growth rate of 9.2%, and its rapidly growing military spending and capabilities. China also possesses nuclear weapons, has military, political and economic power, and has sent humans into space. It is also one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.

With its massive economic power, why does China need Japan’s money, anyway? Japan’s loans may be seen as a type of reparations. In 1937 and 1938, Japanese soldiers massacred approximately 300,000 Chinese in an and around Nanking. They raped between 20,000 and 80,000 Chinese women. The Japanese �beheaded, burned, bayoneted, buried alive, or disemboweled� during their orgy of evil. This history, and guilt, certainly plays a part in the Japanese loans. But that was long ago, and the Japanese have come a very long way.

Now Japan has been barring its teeth against the PRC gorilla. According to yesterday’s BBC:

Japan is to delay a decision on paying further yen loans to China because of the two countries’ worsening relations.

From January 28th’s International Herald Tribune:

Things were different last month. Having been tipped off by U.S. intelligence, Japanese coast guard vessels fired warning shots at North Korean ships which were apparently smuggling amphetamine stimulant drugs from Japan to North Korea as well as spying.

When one cornered North Korean boat responded with rocket-propelled grenades, Japan’s coast guard engaged it with heavy machine guns. The North Korean ship then blew itself up, leaving no survivors. By this time it was in China’s exclusive economic zone. Even though Mr. Koizumi spoke to Chinese leaders before the North Korean ship entered the Chinese zone, Beijing must have been amazed at the unprecedented display of Japanese resolve.

The Japanese face a great strategic, military threat from China and its proxy, North Korea, two countries with abysmal human rights records. Japan also faces unfair trade practices from China in the form of slave and/or pseudo-slave labor in the PRC’s many industrial centers.

Yes, Japan has built its navy back up, but in a more tactical sense. Strategically, Japan is no match for the billionaire Chinese rulers’ pursuit of super weapons.

Economically, Japan has reemerged as a powerhouse, but one can only wonder where China’s hyperbolic growth of industry and technology will take the PRC in the next 20 years.

Sino-Japanese relations can certainly not be considered warm at this time. As the Trib notes:

Chinese spy ships constantly nose around in Japan’s exclusive economic maritime zone, and even transit the Tsugaru Strait between the main Japanese island and Hokkaido. True, this is an international strait, but it is also the maritime heart of Japan, an island nation whose essential security requirement is maritime protection.

Now that China and Russia are signing oil and gas deals, all while the two countries are selling conventional weapons and nuclear technologies to Iran, the chess pieces representing strategic alliances and enemies will be realigned — and not in Japan’s nor the rest of the civilized world’s best interests.

Note that Japan has long wanted an energy deal with Russia, but perhaps Putin and his neo-imperialist cadre are still smarting from the resounding defeat of 1905 (Russo-Japanese War [1904-05]).

Japan can hold her own, as long as she hangs tight with the U.S., Canada, Western Europe, India, and the shining new democracies of Eastern Europe. But she will have to carefully tread in light of the newly emerging Chinese/Russian alliance, both countries with which Japan has had long and sordid relationships.

Western governments are rightly concentrated, to varying degrees, on the fight against Islamo-fascism. But they’ll have to devote enough analysts and decision-makers to focus on a new hegemony rising especially out of Russian/Chinese rapprochement, but including co-conspirators like Iran and North Korea.

Democracies can ignore these seismic shifts, but only at their own peril.

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Related: China, Dictator Watch, Economy

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