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Politics

Китай, Япония и Америка Трампа

Oct 4, 2018 Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

КЕМБРИДЖ (США) – Ключевая стратегическая проблема в Восточной Азии – рост силы Китая. Некоторые аналитики считают, что Китай будет стремиться к установлению гегемонии в Восточной Азии, что приведёт к конфликту. В отличие от Европы, Восточная Азия не до конца перевернула страницы истории 1930-х годов; примирению мешали возникшие в дальнейшем барьеры Холодной войны.

А теперь президент США Дональд Трамп начал торговую войну с Китаем, а также переговоры с Японией, нацеленные на сокращение японского профицита в торговле с США. Двусторонние переговоры, о которых было недавно объявлено, позволяют отложить осуществление угрозы Трампа – ввести пошлин на японские автомобили, однако критики обеспокоены тем, что Трамп может подтолкнуть Японию к Китаю; как раз на октябрь у председателя КНР Си Цзиньпина запланирован саммит с японским премьер-министром Синдзо Абэ.

Баланс силы Японии и Китая заметно изменился за последние десятилетия. В 2010 году ВВП Китая превысил ВВП Японии в долларовом выражении (хотя он по-прежнему очень сильно отстаёт от ВВП Японии в пересчёте на душу населения). С трудом можно вспомнить, как всего лишь два десятилетия назад многие американцы опасались, что их обгонит Япония, а не Китай. Публиковались книги, предсказывавшие появление нового тихоокеанского блока во главе с Японией и без участия США, и даже возможную войну с Японией. Однако при администрации президента Билла Клинтона США подтвердили свой военный альянс с Японией, одновременно примирившись с подъёмом Китая и поддержав вступление этой страны во Всемирную торговую организацию.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 11 Comments on this article

d clark Oct 7, 2018

Very strange headline of the email: "China, Japan, and Trump's America, Joseph Nye believes that, despite a nationalist US administration, the Japanese alliance remains strong – for now."

Nye, himself, doesn't use "despite a nationalist US administration" in the article. Despite? As if China and Japan are not nationalistic? All nations are nationalist, or had better be, if they are sovereign nations and want to remain sovereign.

Apparently PS and its headline writer have a “globalist” (whatever that means) bias.
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j. von Hettlingen Oct 7, 2018

Joseph S. Nye does not see a shift in alliance in the three-way relationship between the China, Japan and the US, and that Tokyo and Washington will continue to cooperate closely on security matters, focusing on North Korea. The nuclear threat posed by Pyongyang allowed Trump to assure Shinzo Abe that the US was behind Japan “100%.” Yet Trump resents Japan’s trade surplus with the US, and threatens to slap 25% tariffs on imports of cars and car parts from Japan.
Trade has emerged as a difficult issue in the US-Japan relations since Trump’s election. During his 2016 campaign, he criticised Japan and South Korea for free-riding on US military power, and said both countries should acquire nuclear weapons if they wished to reduce their reliance on Washington. On trade, he accused China and Japan of unfair trade practices. Worried, Abe visited the president-elect at the Trump Tower days after the election.
After shelving the Trans-Pacific Partnership soon after the inauguration, Trump pushed Abe to agree to negotiations on a bilateral free trade agreement, while asking for a reduction in Japan’s hefty trade surplus with the US. This prompts critics to “worry that Trump may push Japan closer to China, whose president, Xi Jinping, is scheduled to hold a summit with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe later this month.”
Dogged by Trump’s trade war, China and Japan have reached out to one another, as they face the same predicament. Xi Jinping and Shinzo Abe broke the ice during a meeting of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok last month. It was the second time they met since they hailed a “fresh start” to their relationship on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the Vietnamese resort city of Danang in November 2017.
The fraught relationship between China and Japan dates back to the 19th century, when the two countries first fought a war. Japan encroached on Chinese territory and took land, before eventually launching a full-scale invasion in 1937 and committing atrocities during its occupation. Tens of millions of Chinese soldiers and civilians died in the war. After Japan’s defeat and surrender in 1945, Tokyo avoided endlessly to apologise to China and make good for the damage wrought by its armies.
The author says Japan will unlikely “hedge its bets and edge toward China.....While such options may be explored, they will remain limited, given Japanese concerns about Chinese domination.” In the end, Japan knows that the US alliance “remains the best option – unless Trump goes much further.”
Unfortunately Trump hates to abide by America’s treaty obligations to Japan, and other regional allies, because he had never made such an argument – neither during the campaign nor in office. In the event of a war between China and Japan, he wants them to get on without the US. He has no appetite for the two countries to come to terms with their troubled past, because Washington uses Japan to contain China’s rise.
What has become a pattern is the US bashing of any country that poses a threat to its hegemony. When Japan had period of record economic growth between the post-World War II era to the end of the Cold War, anti-Japanese resentment was widespread in the US, because Japan rapidly became the world's second largest economy (after the US).
Now it is China’s turn to take a beating from Trump, who said that letting China and China into the World Trade Organization was a mistake. Bill Clinton reaffirmed America’s “security alliance with Japan at the same time that it accepted the rise of China and supported its admission to the WTO.” As Trump plays zero-sum games, he will soon find himself rather lonely on the world stage, because things do not always go his way.
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Yoshimichi Moriyama Oct 6, 2018

"Unlike Europe, East Asia never fully came to terms with the 1930s, and Cold War subsequently limited reconciliation." This can be true, patially true or not true at all depending on what one really means by it. But let's suffice it here to say in the interest of space that there are only three Confucianist societies or coutries in the world, China, Korea and Vietnam. Vietnam fought China over eighty times in the past two thousand years and Korean culture is more Confucianist (Chinese-like) than Chinese culture is itself though Korea is a petty counrty.
Japan is not a Confucianist society, very different from them. China, for instance, has a number of big differences from Japan. Just to mention two, the Chinese have the L sound (Zhou Enlai is Shu Onrai and Liu Shaoqi is Ryu Shoki in Japanese) and the political consciousness of the Middle Kingdom, which Japan lacks.

Japan's trade surplus or the United States's deficit is due to either American domestic overspending or American loss of competitiveness in many fields, not due to the "closedness" of the Japanese market. The Japanese market has been as open as any of the Western markets. Washington has not at all concerned with its deficit. Japan voluntarily restrained its exports or voluntarily transferred its plants to the United States, voluntarily on the part of Japan all contrary to the spirit of free trade. But the truth was and is elsewhere. Edwin O. Reischaur, once appointed ambassador to Japan by President Kennedy, said in his last lecture at Harvard, "Voluntarily we very much twisted the Japanese arm and then they voluntarily restricted their trade." (The lecture was videotaped and broadcast in Japan.)
- P. Kamath Oct 25, 2018
  
  Can foreign sight seeing visitors visit Yakusuni shrine without permission?
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- P. Kamath Oct 7, 2018
  
  YM: Are you sure that ". Vietnam fought China over eighty times in the past two thousand years..." . Are you sure? Where did you get this historical info 😊? Please don't include minor bow & arrow encounters !
  - Yoshimichi Moriyama Oct 26, 2018
    
    Long time no hear. Anybody can visit it regardless of his or her nationality. At night it is closed. A lot of Chinese tourists are visiting it not to pray but they have heard so much slander about it. You can read about it at Yasukuni Shrine － Japane Guide.
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- Yoshimichi Moriyama Oct 6, 2018
  
  Japan's gross government debt may be 236% of GDP, but after netting out government-owned finacial assets, the International Monetary Fund estimates net debt at a much lower 152％ (Adair Turner, Japan's Successful Economic Model, Pro-Syn.) Though I cannot be so sanguine as Prof. Turner, the Japanese have savings about 1.5 times more than the government debt. Wall Street's imperialism has been putting pressure on the US government to make Japan change the finacial system so that it can make easy inroads into the Japanese savings.
  - P. Kamath Oct 26, 2018
    
    Thank you for the info. To me , in Japan, there are more important cultural and historic places to visit than Yakasuni memorial centre 😊 !
    - Yoshimichi Moriyama Oct 26, 2018
      
      Finish your homework before visiting the shrine.
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https://prosyn.org/7FLDz9dru

Китай, Япония и Америка Трампа

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