Eamonn Fingleton, the author of In the Jaws of the Dragon, ($19.99 at Castalia Direct) observes that the USA would be very, very unwise to put much weight on its strategic alliance with Japan in the event of a serious war with China over the South Pacific:
The Japanese and the Chinese are pragmatic people who rarely let history get in the way of good business. And there is no question that, for both sides, the alliance is good business. The two economies are highly complementary: Japan’s ultra capital-intensive manufacturers supply the sophisticated components and complex equipment needed by China’s labour-intensive factories. As the resulting consumer goods are exported mainly to the west, the relationship is a win-win in trade terms for both nations. For Japan in particular, the benefits are far larger than is generally understood: it has an enormous interest in China’s exporting success. Thus although China’s exports to the U.S. now exceed even Japan’s, the widely voiced conclusion that China’s success has come at Japan’s expense is misguided. The truth is that a large proportion of the high-tech components and materials used in China’s exports originates in Japan. In effect, much of what Japan exports to the U.S. these days goes through China. This helps explain a crucial fact: Japan’s aggregate current account surpluses with the world as a whole are three to four times greater than China’s.
Short-term economic considerations are not the decisive factor in Japan’s changing diplomatic priorities. Japan’s preference for a world led by China rather than by the U.S. is based on culture. Though many westerners imagine otherwise, Japan is deeply uncomfortable with many aspects of western culture. Although Japan presents a thoroughly westernized face to the world, this reflects no sincere acceptance of Judeo-Christian values.
Japan and China share Confucian and Buddhist traditions. Both are ruled by a traditional East Asian ethos of father knows best. Citizens are saddled with a heavy burden of duties while being denied many rights taken for granted in the west.
Because of their common cultural heritage, the Japanese and Chinese think alike in economic matters, too. Officials in both nations have huge powers to direct savings flows, build export industries, and generally shape economic outcomes. This means the two nations find themselves making common cause in opposing American efforts to reshape other nations’ economies along U.S. lines.
Human rights is another area in which a common cultural heritage has helped align the two nations’ diplomatic interests. Japanese and Chinese leaders are at one in viewing a nation’s human rights policies as a purely internal affair. Thus Japan does not try to dictate China’s human rights policies, any more than China tries to dictate Japan’s.
I suspect Fingleton’s analysis is much more likely to be correct than the common foreign policy assumption that Japan is frightened of China and will rely upon the US military to protect it from its increasingly ascendant neighbor.
As difficult as it may be for the average Westerner to accept, the Japanese do not genuinely prize the Western values and social structures that were forcibly imposed upon them subsequent to their military defeat at the hands of the USA. The USA has twice imposed its will upon an unwilling Japanese people, first in 1853, then again in 1945, and I expect that the Japanese would be considerably more comfortable in a Chinese hegemony than in the entirely foreign one that the US hegemony represents.
The Japanese know perfectly well that the Chinese are not a naturally aggressive empire. For centuries, China has been internally focused, and far more sinned against by imperial Western powers than inclined to engage in any imperial adventures. True, the Japanese occupation of the 20th century was cruel, but considerably less cruel and less lethal than the Cultural Revolution that followed it.
And it is entirely evident that the superficial adoption of Western ways has not been good for the Japanese people. The malaise that affects them is entirely the result of the attempt to impose Western civilization on a foreign nation lacking any integral connection to its three foundations, Christianity, the Graeco-Roman legacy, and the European nations. I doubt it escapes Japanese observers that the West is presently suffering the same malaise as a result of its rejection of its own civilizational roots.
