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Will China, Japan, and South Korea hit the 'reset' button for Asia? - CSMonitor.com
Behind that optimism is cold economic reality: The three Asian giants need each other's trade and investment, and all the incoming governments have made economic prosperity the cornerstone of their policies.
"There is enough economic focus in all three countries" to trump the issues of nationalist pride that divide them," says Torkel Patterson, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Their success or failure will be felt far beyond the region. China, Japan, and South Korea accounted for more than 16 percent of world trade in 2011, according to the International Monetary Fund. In parlous economic times, the world cannot afford to see politics undermine the growth prospects of such a key region.
A lot will depend on Japan
Key to the new dynamics will be Mr. Abe. He is viewed with mistrust by his neighbors because his vision of a resurgent Japan seems to them to be based on a continued denial of how poorly Japan behaved when it was last a dominant regional power, in the 1930s and '40s.
In the past, Abe has said he did not believe that the Japanese Imperial Army had forcibly recruited sex slaves, or "comfort women," to serve Japanese soldiers, a denial that infuriates South Koreans as well as runs counter to a previous official Japanese admission of guilt.
He has also publicly regretted not visiting Yasukuni, the Tokyo shrine to Japanese war dead that also honors 14 Class A war criminals, when he was last prime minister.
But since retaking office, Abe has been "pragmatic and careful" not to raise such contentious issues, says Hiroshi Meguro, a foreign-affairs analyst at Tokyo's Hosei University. Abe also backed off a campaign pledge to make a big issue out of Tokyo's claim to islands under South Korean control, known here as the Takeshima and in Korea as the Dokdo.
Faced with the more immediate threat of China's claim to a key set of islands , "Abe needs allies, and that is encouraging him to mute anti-South Korean rhetoric," says Robert Dujarric, a regional analyst at the Tokyo campus of Temple University.
Washington is clearly anxious to see its two treaty allies in the region, Japan and South Korea, mend their ties, as is the new Japanese government. "Both sides should come to their senses about our priorities" in light of China's rise, says Taro Kono, a veteran member of parliament from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. "And the priority is cooperation."
A lot will depend, says one Western diplomat, on "how strongly Abe feels on the history issues in his heart ... compared with the downside he sees of messing things up with an important partner in the region."
Even if Abe can hold his tongue, the South Korean public is very wary. Ms. Park has said she wants to improve relations with Japan, and as an outspoken advocate of former comfort women she has the credentials to make overtures to Tokyo, Dr. Delury says. But "she will have to step with great caution ... so as not to get ahead of her public," he warns.
Neither will Park want to make friends with Japan at the risk of alienating China, which has become Seoul's top trading partner. The new South Korean leader speaks Chinese and was the previous government's special envoy to Beijing, giving her a natural inclination to work closely with the new Chinese authorities; one of her main goals is to negotiate a free-trade agreement with China.
At the same time, Beijing has deeply disappointed Seoul in recent years by its continued support for North Korea even when Pyongyang directly attacked the South. Beijing did not condemn Pyongyang in 2010 when it sank a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, for example.
Park has made overtures to the North, offering food and fertilizer and advocating a relationship based on trust. But only pressure from Beijing is expected to have any impact on Pyongyang's nuclear program and there are few signs that Seoul will be able to count on such pressure.
Economic fallout?
Japan, meanwhile, locked in a territorial dispute with China over islets in the East China Sea, is suffering the economic fallout. Exports to China, once its biggest market, fell by nearly 7 percent last year, according to Chinese customs figures.
But bilateral trade was still a whopping $330 billion between the world's second- and third-largest economies, tying them in interdependent knots that would be difficult to undo. Abe's caution so far in dealing with the island crisis is driven largely by the fact that "Japan is certainly cognizant of the damage it would suffer if relations with China really go into the tank," the Western diplomat says.
