KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe answers questions in the House of Councilors budget committee session at Parliament in Tokyo on Feb. 19, 2013.
TOKYO — China has a “deeply ingrained” need to spar with Japan and other Asian neighbors over territory, because the ruling Communist Party uses the disputes to maintain strong domestic support, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in an interview.
Clashes with neighbors, notably Japan, play to popular opinion, Abe said, given a Chinese education system that emphasizes patriotism and “anti-Japanese sentiment.”
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Abe’s theory on the entrenched motivation behind China’s recent naval aggression helps explain why he has spent more effort trying to counter the Chinese than make peace with them: He thinks the fierce dispute with China over an island chain in the East China Sea isn’t going away anytime soon.
Abe spoke about China in what aides described as unusually detailed terms, laying out challenges that Chinese leaders might face if other Asian countries, unnerved by Beijing’s maritime expansionism, decide to reduce trade and other economic ties. China’s government would be hurt by such moves, Abe said, because without economic growth, it “will not be able to control the 1.3 billion people . . . under the one-party rule.”
Abe also laid out his plans for deterrence, which include boosting military spending and strengthening ties with Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and other nations that share concerns about Beijing. Abe, who is to meet Friday with President Obama in Washington, said the U.S. presence in Asia is “critical” to deter China from taking territory controlled by other countries.
His comments came in an interview Saturday with The Washington Post, which The Post was granted on the condition that the article not be published until Abe was departing for Washington.
In recent years, China has played an increasingly boisterous role in the South China Sea, claiming a massive sphere of territory that includes some of the world’s most trafficked shipping lanes and overlaps with claims of a half-dozen other countries. For Japan, the dispute with China focuses on a chain of remote islands in the East China Sea known to Japanese as the Senkaku and to Chinese as the Diaoyu, several of which Japan’s central government purchased in September after previously renting.
“What is important first and foremost,” Abe said, “is to make [China] realize that they would not be able to change the rules or take away somebody’s territorial water or territory by coercion or intimidation.”
Abe’s assessment of China sounds like a version of the one that experts in Beijing give of Japan, which they say has shifted to the right on foreign policy and security issues in a bid to recover clout and pride lost during two decades of economic stagnation. Abe’s criticism of Chinese education is also notable because, during his first stint as prime minister six years ago, he revised a law to encourage a more patriotic curriculum in Japan’s classrooms.
Pragmatic and popular
Abe became prime minister for a second time in December, after making a string of far-right campaign pledges to revise Japan’s pacifist constitution and loosen certain restrictions on the armed forces. He also promised to be tougher on China than the previous government, the deeply unpopular and moderate Democratic Party of Japan, which was booted from office.
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