The Language Barrier And The Dragon

 
When I was a smalltown Christian living a smalltown life, in smalltown South Africa, I had this idea that the East was this extremely powerful dragon. For some reason it had stayed in its cave, but eventually it would turn its attention to the knight in shining armor, gallant, but brave, strong, but small (by comparison) rattling his sabre and crying out in a tinny voice outside.

The dragon seemed like the appropriate symbol. You heard fearful comparisons in church, to the dragon and Satan.
But when you leave a small town, your horizon fills up with the true dimensions of a thing. Real life becomes, well, real.

Russia and China conducted their first joint military exercises, dubbed “Peace Mission 2005,” last week. Many observers contend that the maneuvers were meant to send a clear message to the United States, Japan, and the rest of the world that the jury is still out over power in Taiwan and Central Asia.

TAIPEI — Taiwan Daily (liberal, pro-independence), Aug. 21: “If one wants to analyze why China and Russia want to jointly start such military drills, a relatively more reasonable answer will be that China wants to use this military exercise to make a show of its force to the ‘U.S.-Japan security alliance.’
Russia, on the other hand, is attempting to use this drill to release the strategic pressure it encounters in East Europe and Central Asia. … The situation on the Korean peninsula will be the next [that is worth observation]. Since both China and Russia are participants of the Six Party Talks as well as standing members of the U.N. Security Council, the joint Sino-Russia military drill will not only attempt to place pressure on the ‘U.S.-Japan alliance’ but will also seek to form a new alliance among the participants of the Six Party Talks. China has already [succeeded in] maintaining a close relationship with South Korea. If it could create a new cooperative relationship with Russia following the joint military exercise and apply it on the Korean peninsula, it will be able to form a confrontational situation between the ‘China-Russia-Seoul-Pyongyang’ [force] and the ‘U.S.-Japan alliance’ once the fourth round of Six Party Talks is resumed.”
— Lai I-chung

LONDON — Financial Times (centrist), Aug. 19: “’Peace Mission 2005,’ the first joint military exercise launched yesterday by China and Russia, is not the innocent peacekeeping drill its name suggests. It represents a significant deepening of the military relationship between a former superpower and an emerging one, and therefore will be closely watched by the only current superpower, the U.S. … If these war games were really about peacekeeping, they would not require the mock amphibious assaults, attack submarines and Russian long-range strategic bombers that military analysts say are involved. …”

China, although it has over a billion people, has an economy that it still smaller than California. It's growing at nearly 10% a year, but it's off a fairly modest base. China has, until recently, had an extremely modest military. In the last few hundred years China has not been a military threat by an stretch of the imagination. But for the first time this year, in late August actually, China and Russia conducted joint military operations. They did so in direct response to US military adventures as far from US soil as Afganistan (very close to China and Russia) and also Iraq. If you think China and Russia were worried by these excursions, you're right. If you think the joint military exercise conducted by China and Russia in the last months was really an elaborate message to America, you're right. The message is this: BEWARE.

Interestingly, China's nuclear arsenal can't even be called that. It's a few spears in a shed compared to America's nuclear supermarket. So much for being a 'dragon'.
Yet the world is well aware of the potential for the East to erupt into a tinderbox. North Korea has developed nuclear weapons - and Kim Jong Il has seen how the America ousted Saddam Hussein, toppled his statues and colonised that country. In response Japan is re-arming their military, especially with defensive missile systems supplied by America. Taiwan is doing the same, and China responds. Result: an arms race in Asia. You had better believe that this is a very, very serious issue.

The real troublemaker, historically, in the East, has been Japan. This small Island Nation is the Germany of the East. Their invasions overcame China as far south as Singapore. Imagine a country who would unilaterally attack America. The Japanese warmongers were very aggressive, and this aggression was instilled in their soldiers; everyone is familiar with the kamikaze. That was perhaps the birth of 'suicide bombing'. They did a lot of that, at pearl Harbor, to devastating effect. America responded by the aerial bombardment (much of their fleet was destroyed)all shipments of oil fuel (tankers and so forth) to this resource poor island. If you want to win the war with a country, cut off their fuel. You won't win by fighting endless battles.

Like Germany, Japan had post-war reparations to make. They had to be babysat by the US military (as has Germany). Both countries continue to play host to US military bases, and this is a kind of prolonged pseudo colonialism.

What I didn't expect when I came to South Korea was this deep affection and attachment to America (a country that has slaughtered over 3 million Asian people in their engagements in this region) while being deeply resentful of Japan. I expected a sort've Asian solidarity, but the Chinese, Japanese and South Koreans all pretty much do their own thing and build high walls around their gardens.

It would make more sense to learn Chinese or Japanese if I was a Korean parent. Wow, you have two very impressive markets - one at your front door and the other at your backdoor. Why do business with my-way-or-the-highway America? They will come to do business anyway?

It seems that language is what separates the Asian people from each other. They claim cultural differences, but the temples are similar, the people are similar, the attitudes of modesty and conservatism, come from the same source. Confucionism and Buddism.

I can't comment with any depth of feeling about Japan and the Korean War. But I see a united Europe, I see Germans visiting France and all parts of the world, and I have visited Germany, my father drives a German car, and so do many people. Pay your dues and then move on. So it's a pity that China and South Korea continue to hold a grudge against Japan.

It may be a political device though. Because if you make your population bitter, they can easily be encouraged to go to war. And the fact is, oil resources in the Asia Pacific are soon to be squabbled over. All eyes are turning to Indonesia.

Koizumi visits war shrine; China, S.Korea protest By Linda Sieg and George Nishiyama
Mon Oct 17, 9:08 AM ET

TOKYO (Reuters) - China and South Korea protested angrily on Monday after Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi paid homage at a Tokyo shrine for war dead that its neighbors consider a symbol of Japan's militaristic past.

Japan's relations with Beijing and Seoul had already chilled because of the annual visits by Koizumi to Yasukuni shrine, where war criminals are honored along with 2.5 million war dead.

Clad in a dark suit rather than the traditional Japanese garb he has worn on some past visits, Koizumi bowed, put his hands together in prayer and stood silently in front of an outer shrine for a moment before striding back to his car in front of a crowd that had gathered in drizzling rain.

Escorted by security police, he used the public entrance and did not enter an inner shrine as in the past.

Koizumi later told reporters he had made the visit to pray for peace and that outsiders including foreign governments should not interfere in how Japan mourns its war dead.

"It's a matter of the heart," he said, adding that China and South Korea would eventually understand his intentions.

But Chinese ambassador to Japan Wang Yi branded the visit a "grave provocation to the Chinese people."

"There is no doubt that (the visit) will damage Japan-China relations," Wang was quoted by Kyodo news agency as saying after meeting with Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura.

Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing called in Japan's ambassador to China to express Beijing's "strong indignation," China's Foreign Ministry said on its Web site.

South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon summoned Japanese ambassador Shotaro Oshima to complain, and a presidential aide said President Roh Moo-hyun was unlikely to meet Koizumi for their semi-annual summit meeting this year.

"We strongly protest the visit to Yasukuni shrine despite our request and strongly urge that it is not repeated," Ban said.

Koizumi's visit is also likely to complicate efforts to arrange a summit between Japanese and Chinese leaders this year.

TENSE TIES WITH NEIGHBOURS

About 15 protesters gathered near Japan's embassy in Seoul, where one man tried to shred the Japanese flag with his teeth, while in Hong Kong about 80 people protested outside the Japanese consulate, the territory's government radio said.

A dozen Chinese, waving banners and singing the national song, handed a petition at the Japanese embassy in Beijing.

"Koizumi is a dog. We've always regarded Koizumi as a dog and a dog doesn't change its habits," protest organizer Tong Zeng said.

Japanese companies worry the diplomatic strains will hurt burgeoning economic relations especially between China and Japan, which have annual trade worth about $212 billion.

Japan's exports to China account for some 13 percent of its global exports, second only to 22 percent to the United States.

Tokyo stock market investors, recalling a slide in share prices after anti-Japanese protests in China in April, were wary of the possible fallout from Koizumi's visit to the shrine.

"If there are more protests in China, the market will fall, without a doubt," said Ken Masuda, a dealer at Shinko Securities.

Share prices were little affected on Monday, though.

Koizumi has repeatedly said he visits the Shinto shrine to pray for peace and honor the dead, not to glorify militarism.

He has also avoided going to the shrine on August 15, the anniversary of Japan's 1945 surrender that ended World War Two and an emotive date in the region.

But his visits have outraged China and South Korea, anyway.

"It's fine for the prime minister to stick to his beliefs, but given his status as the Japanese leader he should think about relations between countries and the people's feelings," said Choi Young-soo, 44, a South Korean on a sightseeing trip to the shrine. "He should not stir up ill feelings."

Bitter memories of Japan's 1910-1945 colonization run deep in North and South Korea, while China has not forgotten Tokyo's invasion and occupation before and during World War Two.

Japan's public is divided over the visits, and courts have given conflicting rulings on whether they violate the constitutional separation of religion and state.

Relations between China and Japan hit their lowest level in decades in April when thousands of Chinese took to the streets in sometimes-violent anti-Japan protests. Ties with China have also been strained by feuds over rights to natural gas resources in the East China Sea and sovereignty over small islands.

(Additional reporting by Elaine Lies and Teruaki Ueno in Tokyo, and Jack Kim in Seoul)

The troublemaker now appears to be North Korea, or is it Japan. No, it's the United States. It's their interference that is leading to instabilities everywhere. Old alliances may soon be tested once more.