China's rise affects the U.S.-Japan alliance

The rise of China has had a tremendous influence on the U.S.-Japan coalition. The United States tends to regard China as a competitor, sometimes even a potential enemy, while China's neighbor Japan sees China's rapid growth as a threat. In simple words, China's rise serves as a new target for the U.S.-Japan alliance after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Nevertheless, the issue is not that simple. China's development is also a process of opening-up and globalization. In this process, China and the United States highly rely on each other in economic terms. Such interdependence also exists on the strategic level, in that Beijing and Washington need each other's support in major international affairs.

In theory, the Sino-U.S. relationship constitutes part of the global structure. China and the United States have to cooperate, or else the global structure fails. From this perspective, the United States cannot afford to lose its relationship with China. For the same reason, many Chinese tend to believe that the United States wouldn't sacrifice China for Japan, and some even believe that it would, besides sacrificing Japan, eventually rally on China's side.

While the United States continues to strengthen its coalition to reap the benefits, it also has to bear a huge cost to keep the alliance running. The coalition is a pillar in the U.S. Asia-Pacific strategy. The U.S. failure to intervene when Japan comes under threat from China, the U.S. reputation and credit among all of its allies will instantly collapse. That day would then in turn mark the end to the U.S. global hegemony.

[By Zhai Haijun/China.org.cn]

Japan's erroneous historical view dampens U.S. interest

In fact, if Japan could have acted like Germany to truthfully face history and unload its historical burden, things would have been quite different. Unfortunately, help from Washington has indulged Japan to act on its own: Japan not only completely denies its historical burden, but also wishes to restore its former imperial glory. The only remaining reflection on history in Japan is more often labeled as a "masochistic historical view."

Apart from China, South Korea is yet another Asian country affected by Japan's twisted historical views. In the post-Cold War era, the United States has to integrate the existing U.S.-Japan and U.S.-South Korea alliances to counter "threats" from China. The U.S. wishes to form a trilateral coalition with Tokyo and Seoul, but Japan's so-called "righteous historical view of wars" has proved Washington's attempt to be unrealistic.

From the ideological point of view, Japan is a democratic country which in itself owns some support from the U.S. politics. The Abe administration is hectically dragging the Philippines, India, among several other countries in Asia, to align with Japan and shape its anti-China coalition.

Yet Japan's democratic practice does not serve as an excuse for whitewashing its history of invasion. If the United States dares to unconditionally support Japan, it can no longer claim to be a moral leader.

The deteriorating Sino-Japanese relationship is placing the United States in an awkward position. Washington is discontent with China for inexplicable reasons, among which the China-Japan contention is accelerating Japan to become a normal country. This actually presents a fact the United States would rather not see as a normalized Japan, in lieu of China, will pose a far bigger challenge to the United States.

Once Japan becomes a normalized nation, the United States will lack a legitimate reason to maintain its presence across Asia, especially in Japan itself. In addition, for some inexplicable reasons, the United States is not content with Japan either. Washington welcomes Tokyo's "anti-China" banners since a rising China gives cause for concern. Yet if Japan excessively takes advantage of the coalition, in order to seek the country's normalization, it will eventually break away from the alliance and start to challenge the United States.

China should be deeply aware of the U.S. "Japan dilemma" when rationally drafting its own Japan and U.S. policies. To a large extent, China possesses far more strategic mobility than the United States since, at least so far, China has not yet formed any alliance with other countries -- which in reality means no alliance responsibility for Beijing to worry about. China's "non-alliance choice" is beneficial to the peace in East Asia because historically many an alliance has tended to foster war.

Many people have been keen on the current East Asian situation, claiming it is similar to that in Europe on the eve of World War II. However, these people have failed to notice one striking difference: all European countries had already formed an alliance before World War II. In this scenario, once a war breaks out, all countries aligned have to take sides -- which will force tensions to rapidly escalate.

In the current East Asia, China bears no alliance with any country, a fact that would deter tensions while simultaneously allow China more time and better mobility to control the situation.

As long as China is sufficiently rational as to master the traits in Sino-U.S. relations, it can achieve a balance between tension and compromise in the current China-Japan struggle. Avoiding war means China can continue its peaceful rise to become a true major power.

The author is dean of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore.

The article was translated by Chen Boyuan. Its original version was published in Chinese.

Opinion stories reflect the authors' own opinions, not necessarily that of the China.org.cn.