TOKYO: Leaving confusion and hurt feelings in her wake, Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi cut short a fence-mending visit here on Monday, a day early and just a few hours before she was to meet Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
Wu was the most senior Chinese official to visit Japan in five years, and her trip had been described as an attempt to improve the strained atmosphere between Asia’s two biggest powers. But on Monday morning, she told her hosts she was returning to Beijing to deal with a “sudden duty,” according to Hiroyuki Hosoda, Japan’s chief Cabinet secretary. Chinese officials did not explain the reason for her early departure.
It was unclear whether the cancellation of a meeting the Chinese requested was intended as a diplomatic snub. Wu did not leave Tokyo immediately after informing the Japanese of her revised plans. Instead, she delivered a scheduled speech to a Japanese business group, warning its members that “the relationship between the two countries is not satisfactory or benign.” She then had lunch with business leaders, many of whom have been alarmed by the rise in anti-Japanese sentiment in China.
Some senior Japanese executives have warned Koizumi of the urgent need to repair ties with China. That goal would be achieved most easily, they have noted, if the prime minister would end his controversial visits to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, where Japan’s war dead — including World War II war criminals — are commemorated. For his part, Koizumi expressed surprise at Wu’s early departure. “It was their request to hold a meeting and I thought it would have been a good opportunity. I don’t understand why they are cancelling it now,” he told reporters. “If they don’t want to meet, there is no need to.” Wu is regarded as a skilled negotiator and fixer whose meeting with Koizumi was supposed to be the first step toward easing recent tensions
. Anti-Japanese riots rocked several Chinese cities last month, ostensibly in response to reports that new history textbooks in Japan sanitized accounts of atrocities committed by the nation’s troops during World War II. But there are several other feuds between the two countries, including territorial disputes over undersea energy deposits and Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni, which he says are opportunities to pray for peace.
Koizumi last visited the shrine in January 2004, incurring the wrath of Japan’s neighbours for what they described as the prime minister’s insensitivity to the painful legacy of his country’s past aggression. Last week, even as Wu was visiting the World Exposition in the Japanese city of Nagoya, Koizumi reaffirmed his intention to visit Yasukuni again some time this year. His statement quickly drew fire around Asia. Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told Japanese reporters there that another Yasukuni visit could be “interpreted by many people, including many in Singapore, as being a gesture of not entirely accepting the responsibility and not accepting that Japan did wrong during the war.” Chinese President Hu Jintao told two visiting Japanese lawmakers on Sunday that the precarious state of relations between Asia’s biggest powers could be damaged “in an instant” if Koizumi persisted with actions upsetting to Japan’s neighbors.
While Koizumi appeared to shrug off the vice premier’s early departure, other officials had more caustic reactions. Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura told reporters in Tokyo that, “We hope they will comply with international diplomatic rules and etiquette a little more.”
There was some speculation Wu might have left after her luncheon but before her meeting with Koizumi in order to contrast Beijing’s warm feelings toward Japanese business leaders with the deep chill at the political level. With Japanese investment in China soaring, investors are unsettled by the volatile political mood and a few have urged Koizumi to compromise on the Yasukuni issue. They argue that anti-Japanese feelings in China have cost them lucrative contracts, such as those to build high-speed railway lines and cellular phone networks.
But expressing pro-China feelings marks executives as potential targets for intimidation from right-wing extremists. The business community recently has fallen quiet on the subject. Critics also note that pro-China voices within Koizumi’s Cabinet and inner circle have been stripped of influence as a byproduct of a power struggle over the prime minister’s domestic agenda, giving greater voice to those with a more hawkish view.
“The balance in the governing party has suddenly collapsed,” said Masaru Kaneko, a finance policy expert at Keio University. “It’s a pity that the realistic politicians who have worked hard at maintaining diplomatic ties with China have been eliminated.”—Dawn/LAT-WP News Service
