Fat Years - Chan Koonchung [114]
Having noticed this fact, recently many Russian regions bordering on China have altered their attitudes and tacitly allowed or even openly welcomed Chinese capital, businesses, and workers to come in and cooperate in their development. For the sake of our two nations’ core interests and in consideration of our grand strategies, as long as China doesn’t bring up the question of its lost territory, China and Russia are perfectly able to live in peaceful coexistence.
He Dongsheng said that this great recent shift in the global center of gravity presented China with the opportunity of a century. In the past few years, China had been developing quite smoothly, but in order to have long-term security and to “rule the nation and pacify the world” (as the traditional phrase goes), He Dongsheng believed there was still one key move remaining: an alliance with Japan, “to make ‘East Asia for the East Asians’ a reality,” he said.
Only when Japan changed its attitude, shook off the United States, and entered Asia could American imperialism be removed from East Asia, and the Cold War arrangements finally collapse. Once the two Asian superpowers, China and Japan, joined hands, a new world order appeared, and a new post-Western, post-white era was ineluctably created. There was nothing Europe and America could do but accept it. This prospect was what had motivated Sun Yat-sen in 1924, when he went to Japan to promote Asianism and urged the Japanese not to emulate Western imperialism, but instead to join hands with China and make the traditional Chinese “Kingly Way” a reality. Sun Yat-sen was a nationalist.
“Do you think he didn’t see Japan’s ambitions?” He Dongsheng asked his audience.
He did, but he understood that neither China nor Japan alone had the might to force the Western powers out of Asia, but if they worked together, nothing could stop the rejuvenation of Asia. Sadly, though, Japan didn’t heed Sun Yat-sen’s good advice, and went on to invade China and the rest of East Asia, ruining themselves and many others, and causing both countries to suffer tremendous losses.
Now the opportunity had come again. The leaders of China and Japan risked overwhelming internal opposition to conclude an alliance, signing the most comprehensive security treaty in the history of their two nations, and an extremely close bilateral economic-cooperation agreement.
“You probably don’t know,” said He Dongsheng, “that Japanese military might is second only to that of the United States and China.” He went on to relate that, in theory, Japan’s defense spending is only 1 percent of its GDP, but the Japanese economy is very large, and, just as in China, much of its military spending is hidden in other budget items. These include naval forces, its space program, and its weapons research and development, none of which show up in the national defense budget. Although Japan’s official military spending is slightly less than China’s, Japan leads in advanced technology, and many of Japan’s civilian industries can be easily converted to military use.
With Japan having a conventional military might equal to that of China and being so geographically close, it made China extremely nervous when it was not viewed as a friendly state—not to mention the continued presence of American troops in Japan, the island of Okinawa, and South Korea.
By the same token, Japan had