How China is seeking to make friends and not alienate people

Share

China is hardly stowing the verbal artillery that seems permanently aimed at Japan. State-owned newspapers have, in the past month alone, interviewed survivors of the Nanjing massacre; raged against a "naming farce" after Japan assigned it own names to several islands claimed by China; accused Tokyo of "maliciously" playing up "the so-called China threat"; and called Australia "foolish" for seeking closer ties with Japan.

Yet if China is to be judged by its actions over the howls of its press, then there are signs it is changing course in a new bid to mollify neighbours, as it becomes clear that a hard-nosed approach has left Beijing alienated.

On Sunday, the Xinhua news agency carried a brief report from Myanmar suggesting the heated rhetoric is giving way to an increasingly serious conversation with its most powerful rival, one that seems increasingly likely to produce a Sino-Japanese leadership summit this November.

In Myanmar, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida and "held an informal contact … to exchange views on ways to improve China-Japan relations," Xinhua reported.

Xinhua took care to add a barb to its coverage, blaming "Tokyo's unrepentant attitude toward its maritime history" for the fraught relations that have kept the countries' top leaders from meeting since 2012, when Tokyo sought to purchase islands whose ownership is disputed.

But months of careful diplomatic effort have sought to change that, including most recently a quiet meeting between Chinese president Xi Jinping and former Japanese prime minister Yasuo Fukuda. A meeting between Mr. Xi and Japan's Shinzo Abe now seems increasingly likely in November, when Beijing hosts the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

Such a summit would appear to be a break-through for China's relations with its neighbours, particularly as it softens its touch in other areas. In mid-July, China ordered home a rig that had drilled for oil in waters claimed by Vietnam, setting off a lengthy conflict that involved huge numbers of vessels between the two countries. The rig was brought back a month earlier than expected.

Taken together, the events suggest Beijing is stepping back from an aggressive stand that has, since Mr. Xi took office, enraged those around it and led to a series of near-misses between rival jets and naval patrol ships.

"The leadership may be reevaluating its approach, because those kind of tensions – regardless of who arguably started them and who is really responsible – put China in a bad light," said Xie Tao, a professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University who studies Chinese diplomacy.

The motive may be less than altruistic. China is not eager to host APEC with a target on its back, in particular given the importance it places on wowing the world with splashy events that, whether it's the Olympics in 2008 or the Shanghai Expo in 2010, symbolize its new global prominence.

"If you have Abe conspicuously absent from the APEC summit, that could really take away a lot of the lustre from the meeting," Mr. Xie said. "It seems to me that this slightly positive turn in the China-Japan relationship is probably driven by short-term considerations."

Any actual meeting between Mr. Xi and Mr. Abe will be "mostly symbolic," a gesture of goodwill that will do nothing to change a tough underlying reality, and may allow strife to re-emerge after November. "This relationship is going nowhere unless the leadership on both sides makes major substantive concessions. Which does not seem likely with Shinzo Abe continuing in office," Mr. Xie said.

Still, there are signs China is considering the ill-will it has sown, and how to undo it.

Beijing finds itself caught between a desire to seize land and water its leadership – and its people – consider rightfully their own, and the reality that its assertiveness has hurt its regional standing.

China's pursuit of maritime disputes was succinctly summarized in a weekend interview with Japan's Asahi news service by Wu Jianmin, a respected Chinese diplomat who once served as ambassador to France.

"We, the Chinese, feel that areas that we initially owned ended up being occupied by other countries when our national power waned in the past," he said. "We wish to take those areas back into our own hands because our nation is powerful now. The problem lies in how to take them back."

So far, those attempts have created a series of aerial and maritime confrontations with China's neighbours, since Beijing has eschewed international conventions for dispute resolution. They have also renewed global suspicion of how the country intends to use its rising martial and economy ability, and damaged China's global standing.

Parallel polls this summer made clear the shift.

Deep skepticism marks Pew polling of China's neighbours, with 58 per cent of Filipinos holding unfavourable views of China, up from 48 per cent last year. Asian countries are also scared of war, with some 93 per cent in the Philippines and roughly 85 per cent of those in Japan, Vietnam and South Korea saying they are "very concerned" military conflict will erupt.

At the same time, Gallup polling in Asia shows the most positive views toward the U.S. since the beginning of the George W. Bush administration, with some 45 per cent saying they approve of American leadership's performance.

In a recent presentation at the Foreign Studies University, Paul Evans quoted The Eagles: "You see it your way. And I see it mine. But we both see it slippin' away." No one disagreed, said Mr. Evans, a professor at the University of British Columbia and former co-chief executive of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.

"A couple of senior people I've spoken with are talking about how China can take a higher road now. They've had a disastrous two years," he said.

Chinese academics and government officials have also recently been dispatched in small teams to various southeast Asian capitals on quiet listening tours, Mr. Evans said.

Whether it amounts to anything may not be evident for some time. But it is, at very least, a new tack, something "I have never seen before," he said.