The Age of Uncertainty: the U.S.-China-Japan Triangle From

The Age of uncertainty The U.S.-China-Japan Triangle from Tiananmen (1989) to 9/11 (2001) Edited by Ezra F. Vogel Yuan Ming Akihiko Tanaka This on-line text published by the Harvard University Asia Center The Age of Uncertainty The U.S.-China-Japan Triangle from Tiananmen (1989) to 9/11 (2001) Harvard East Asian Monographs Online The Age of Uncertainty The U.S.-China-Japan Triangle from Tiananmen (1989) to 9/11 (2001) Edited by Ezra F. Vogel Yuan Ming Akihiko Tanaka Published by the Harvard University Asia Center Cambridge, Massachusetts 2004 © 2004 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College Printed in the United States of America The Harvard University Asia Center publishes a monograph series and, in coordina- tion with the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, the Korea Institute, the Reis- chauer Institute of Japanese Studies, and other faculties and institutes, administers research projects designed to further scholarly understanding of China, Japan, Vietnam, Korea, and other Asian countries. The Center also sponsors projects addressing mul- tidisciplinary and regional issues in Asia. Contents Introduction Ezra Vogel, “The United States Perspective” 3 Yuan Ming, “The Chinese Perspective” 18 Akihiko Tanaka, “The Japanese Perspective” 23 Part I Domestic Politics Michael Nacht, “Domestic Roots of U.S. China Policy (with Thoughts on Japan) from Clinton Through 2001 39 Zhang Baijia, “Chinese Domestic and Foreign Policies in the 1990s” 61 Shin’ichi Kitaoka and Matake Kamiya, “Japanese Politics and Security Policy, 1990–2001” (preliminary version) 82 Part II U.S.-China Relations Robert Ross, “From Denial to Leadership:The Clinton Administration and China” 125 Jia Qingguo, “Narrowing Differences but Diverging Priorities: Sino-American Relations, 1992–2000” 154 vi Contents Part III U.S.-Japanese Relations Gerald Curtis, “U.S. Policy Toward Japan in the 1990s” 185 Koji Murata, “Japan’s Policy Toward the United States During the 1990s” 204 Part IV Sino-Japanese Relations Zhang Tuosheng, “Sino-Japanese Relations at the Turn of the Century” 227 Akio Takahara, “Japan’s Policy Toward China in the 1990s” 254 The Age of Uncertainty The U.S.-China-Japan Triangle from Tiananmen (1989) to 9/11 (2001) Introduction The United States Perspective Ezra F. Vogel How did the three powers in the Asia-Pacific region—the United States, China, and Japan—adjust their relations in the uncertain envi- ronment after Tiananmen (June 4, 1989) and the end of the Cold War? We approach these questions from both a domestic and a foreign policy perspective. Three scholars describe the domestic context in each of the three countries. Each of the three bilateral relationships is examined by two scholars, one from each country involved. The essays in this volume were first presented at the third conference on the relationship between the United States, China, and Japan from the end of World War II to the close of the twentieth century. The papers from the first conference, held at Harvard in May 1998, are available on a web site: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~asiactr/ sino-Japanese/index.htm. Those from the second conference, held in Tokyo in January 2000, are available in The Golden Age of the U.S.- China-Japan Triangle, 1972–1989 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer- sity Asia Center, 2002). The third conference, on which the chapters in this volume are based, was held in Beijing in April 2001; the chap- ter were subsequently revised to take into account the impact of Sep- tember 11. ————— Ezra F. Vogel is Henry Ford II Research Professor at Harvard University. © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2004. This essay may not be repro- duced without permission from the Harvard University Asia Center. 3 4 Ezra F. Vogel The editors, who were also the organizers of the three conferences, believe that in the twenty-first century peace and security, not only in Asia but in the entire world, require effective working relationships between the three great powers of the Asia-Pacific region. The conferences were organized so that scholars from the United States, China, and Japan might contribute to the goal of constructive cooperation by seeking a common understanding of the forces that have affected relations between their three countries in recent dec- ades. At the time the conferences were launched, Yuan Ming was the director of the International Relations program at Peking University, and Ezra Vogel was the director of the Asia Center and the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard. Tanaka Akihito became the director of the Institute of Oriental Culture at the University of Tokyo in April 2002. Each in turn drew on leading specialists in his own country. *** The years 1972–89, leading up to the period covered by this volume, were not easy, as China turned against its former ally, the Soviet Un- ion, and began working with the United States and Japan. But, al- though the process was complex, the three nations’ common strategic interests gave them a positive basis for cooperation. This strategic rationale, bringing together China, Japan, and the United States against their mutual enemy, the Soviet Union, ended abruptly in 1989 with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the ensuring breakup of the Soviet Union and of the Soviet Communist Party. The result was a new period of great uncertainty, with many ups and downs. De- spite the increased tensions, however, in the 1990s the level of mutual economic activity, exchange of people, and communication between the three countries continued to grow. In the period from 1972 to 1989, interactions between China and the other two powers were very limited, and the relationships could be managed by a small number of people who were concerned with national strategy. In the 1990s these relations, now greatly expanded, became more en- meshed in domestic concerns and domestic politics and were more difficult for a small group of leaders to control. U.S.-China Relations By 1989 it was clear that Deng Xiaoping’s strategy of opening and re- form, launched a decade earlier, was enormously successful, and the nation’s GDP was beginning to grow at a rate exceeding 10 percent a year. With China’s population surpassing that of Europe and North The United States Perspective 5 America combined, a major global change was taking place. China was starting from a very low base, but it was modernizing not only its industry and infrastructure but also its military. The rise of any country creates anxieties in its neighbors, and China, with its long history, rich civilization, and huge population, naturally provoked new concerns in Southeast Asia, in Japan, and in the United States. The United States’ foreign policy, as Henry Kissinger and others have pointed out, has long been composed of two pillars: one flows from a realistic assessment of national power and interests, the other from a desire to affirm the values for which America stands. During the Cold War, with the perceived dangers from the Soviet bloc, the balance between these two pillars shifted toward a realistic concern with national power and interests. With the Cold War over, it seemed to many Americans that the United States no longer needed to support dictatorships that had allied with it against the Soviets. The United States’ foreign policy therefore had more leeway to dem- onstrate support for American values. There are many countries in the world that do not behave in ac- cord with U.S. standards of human rights. But the drama of the crackdown around Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, vividly con- veyed by television around the world, occurred just at the time that the balance of concerns in U.S. foreign policy began to shirt more toward affirming the country’s values than looking after its strategic interests. China, with its size and sense of grandeur, and now the dramatic Tiananmen Incident, immediately became a major symbol for many Americans concerned with human rights. This concern was vigorously put forward by Chinese students in the United States whose friends were among those demonstrators, and their voices were reinforced by continued numbers of political dissidents within China who found refuge in the United States. Soon other U.S. groups, including those opposed to abortion, those concerned with strengthening the military, and those supporting propagation of re- ligious faith, also made China the focus of their efforts. Some of the most influential critics of China either were from Taiwan or were Taiwanese who had immigrated to the United States. In 1947, within Taiwan, the KMT (Kuomintang), in retreat from the mainland, had brutally cracked down on local Taiwanese. From then on the KMT relied heavily on military rule and the secret police to maintain discipline—until 1987, when Taiwan ended military rule and lifted the ban on opposition parties. Thus two years later, when the Tiananmen Incident occurred, Taiwan authorities trying to win American support could contrast their democracy with 6 Ezra F. Vogel the brutal totalitarian crackdown of June 4, 1989, in Beijing. And the Taiwanese who had come to the United States could, like other American ethnic groups, use the American political process to gain public support. Since the executive branch had been more concerned with strategic and other international issues that required cooperation with China, Taiwan and its U.S. supporters took their case to Congress. The Tibetan exile community, led by the marvelously charismatic Dalai Lama, also pleaded its case before U.S. public opinion and Congress. After 1989, therefore, the United States’ China policy became a contested issue, as critics of China, strange bedfellows from the right and left, were balanced by pragmatists, business people, and political leaders who realized that the pursuit of U.S.

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