China’s Worrisome “Japanification” Part II: Destined for War?
Xi has demonstrated in recent years that he wouldn’t hesitate to deploy China’s growing military power to settle disputes.
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On July 5th, 2023, the day after many Americans celebrated our Independence Day, China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, lectured Japan and South Korea, two important U.S. allies in Asia, to “revitalize Asia” with China because of their shared “Asianess.”
Wang made racially charged remarks while meeting Japanese and South Korean visitors in China. He ridiculed that most Americans and Europeans considered all Asians to look alike and couldn’t distinguish between Chinese, Japanese, and South Koreans. Wang told his guests: “No matter how blonde you dye your hair or how sharp you shape your nose, you can never become a European or American; you can never become a Westerner. We must know where our roots lie.” Wang urged the other two nations to work with China to “prosper together, revitalize East Asia, revitalize Asia, and benefit the world.”
Wang’s remark sent chills to China’s Asian neighbors and beyond because Japan made similar comments in the early 20th century, seeking to disguise its own geopolitical ambition and justify military conquests by invoking pan-Asianism.
A little historical background: In the late 19th century, China became weakened by domestic challenges and foreign invasions. Meanwhile, Japan transformed itself from a backwater feudalist society into a modern military power through reforms during the “Meiji Restoration.” Japan seized China’s decline as a window of opportunity for its geopolitical expansion. Japan fought and won the first Sino-Japanese War between 1894 and 1895, gaining control of significant parcels of Chinese territory and a hefty indemnity.
Boosted by its military success, Japan challenged Russia over the control of Manchuria and Korea and became the first Asian nation to defeat a European power in 1905. Following the Russo-Japanese War, Japan colonized Korea. In 1937, Japan launched its full invasion of China.
It was within this historical context that Japan’s foreign minister, Matsuoka Yōsuke, first announced the concept of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (GEACPS) in 1940, a blueprint about how Japan could reorder Asia and the world by returning to the "‘sphere-of-influence diplomacy’ of late-nineteenth-century imperialism" (Jeremy Yellen).
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