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October 24, 2006

Second Thoughts on Future Order in East Asia
By SHIRAISHI Takashi
Over the past several weeks, the world witnessed three developments of great importance in East
Asia--Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to Beijing and Seoul to resume summit meetings withChinese and South Korean leaders, North Korea’s claimed nuclear test and a military coup d’etatin Thailand.
The resumption of summit meetings with China and South Korea is indeed good news.
Pyongyang’s proclaimed nuclear test and the Thai coup, however, compel us to have second
thoughts on our assumptions about the future regional order in East Asia. What issues havestemmed from those latest events?
First, let us look at Abe’s summit meetings with the Chinese and South Korean leaders in theirrespective capitals on Oct. 8 and 9. The meetings were aimed at breaking several years ofpolitical impasse with China and South Korea and seizing the opportunity for rebuilding
relations with the two neighboring countries. Abe was expected to take such initiatives, giventhat diplomacy toward Asia continued to be a major political point of contention in Japan, andthe new prime minister had expressed his willingness to address the issue in his inaugural policy
speech and in answers to lawmakers’ questions at the Diet.
In an apparently corresponding move, China began laying the groundwork for a new political
relationship with Japan. Chinese President Hu Jintao has created a political environment inwhich he can exert his leadership in dealing with Japan by controlling China’s Communist Partyand government. Proof of this was the recent dismissal of Chen Liangyu, secretary of theShanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party, who is the right-hand man of former
Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
However, it is the risk-taking leadership of Abe and Hu that ultimately led to the summit talks.
As a result, the two countries will now find it easier to hold working-level consultations on
North Korea and bilateral issues, such as the development of East China Sea natural gas fields,
among others. Such high-level exchanges will facilitate the rebuilding of a bilateral relationshipof mutual trust.

1Second, North Korea announced that it exploded a nuclear device on Oct. 9, a development thatposes a grave threat to Japan. Up until now, the international community has adopted a limited
engagement approach to North Korea--Japan and the United States seek to contain North Korea,
while China and South Korea engage with Pyongyang. Under this policy framework, Tokyo andWashington do not agree with Beijing’s engagement policy toward Pyongyang, but, if Chinaadheres to its policy, Japan and the United States hold China responsible for resolving the North
Korean problem. This is about the extent of the “limited engagement” approach.
It has become evident in the wake of North Korea’s ballistic missile test-launches and thismonth’s nuclear test that in reality, Beijing does not hold much sway over Pyongyang. In otherwords, the prerequisite for limited engagement now has been lost. Nor does China want NorthKorea to go nuclear and undermine the already troubled nonproliferation regime. This time,
despite its opposition to international sanctions that might prompt Pyongyang to resort toreckless action, China refrained from vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution to impose
sanctions on North Korea under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter.
International policy toward North Korea has thus shifted from limited engagement to limited
containment. Nonetheless, the adjective “limited” remains because there is no agreement
between the two groups--Tokyo and Washington on the one hand, and Beijing and Seoul (as wellas Moscow) on the other--on what they hope to achieve with the new approach to Pyongyang.
While Japan and the United States aim to have North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs
scrapped, China and South Korea do not want to see a catastrophe befall the country. If thishappens, Seoul would pay an exorbitant price for the unification of the two Koreas. For China, amassive flow of North Korean refugees into northeastern China could cause serious problems,but, more important, the political status of a unified Korea in the future would directly affect its
own security. It should be clear what issue the North Korean problem would really bring forthbeyond the U.N. Security Council’s unanimous resolution to invoke sanctions on North Koreaand limited containment. In the not-so-distant future, the collapse of North Korea and thepolitical status of a unified Korea could emerge as major issues facing the international
community.
What can be done under the circumstances? There are two points that need to be kept in mind.
Better use should be made of a six-minus-one framework or the six-party talks without theparticipation of North Korea to deal with the problem. The other should be for the South
Koreans to recognize this particular problem as their own. According to an instantaneous
opinion poll conducted on Oct. 10 by the South Korean television station SBS, which asked
South Koreans who was to blame for the nuclear test, 38 percent of them held the United States
responsible, compared to 36 percent who blamed Pyongyang. It would be regrettable if theSouth Korean government’s policy toward North Korea were hog-tied by public opinion of thiskind.

2South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun merely stuck to the “history issue” with Japan during his
meeting with Abe, which was held immediately after Pyongyang’s nuclear test. Seoul does notappear determined enough to cope with the nuclear issue by taking political risks on its own.
The South Korean government should be clear about what future of the Korean Peninsula it
wants to build and hold talks with Japan, China, Russia and the United States about it.
Third, the bloodless coup in Thailand on Sept. 19 has been widely regarded as a failure of
democracy in the country. What does the coup have to do with the future of East Asia? Our
perception of the future of East Asia is based on the politics of productivity. It may sounddifficult to comprehend, but, in fact, the theory is easy to understand. If various social
divisions--which exist in every country--can be subsumed under a national consensus to pursue
economic development and the economy then develops, raising living standards, the middle
classes will grow. Such a situation encourages democracy to take root, enabling the economy todevelop further.
The politics of productivity builds on these assumptions. Thailand has been hailed as a model insuccessfully realizing such politics. In fact, the middle classes accounted for 34 percent of theoverall population in Thailand in 2000, compared with 15 percent in 1960. Therefore,
democracy was thought to have planted its roots deeply in Thailand since the 1990s. But the big
social divide between the center of Thailand--Bangkok--and rural areas remains intact. Per
capita income in Bangkok is nine times larger than in the northeast of the country. If this werethe case with Japan, it would be suicidal for any government to leave the disparity unaddressed.
Many criticisms aside, the administration of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was thefirst Thai government to attempt to tackle the social divide. For this reason, Thaksin was widely
supported in rural areas. However, the Thai bureaucratic elite, backed by the middle-class
populace in Bangkok, opted to maintain the status quo. In other words, Thailand may not follow
the paths taken by Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. In Thailand, the social divisions will remain
deep and contentious, and democracy will tend to oscillate between elite democracy and populist
democracy. Such a phenomenon is not unique to Thailand. Countries in Southeast Asia may takeon a nation-form that is different from that of Japan, South Korea or Taiwan.
As the above developments indicate, the future of East Asia may not be in line with what wehave so far conceived. By resuming summit talks with China and South Korea, Abe made an
auspicious start in his efforts to rebuild Japan’s diplomacy toward Asia. He is expected to takepart in a summit meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum scheduled forNovember, to be followed by two regional summit meetings in December. One of them is theASEAN plus Three summit meeting involving leaders of the 10 member states of theAssociation of Southeast Asian Nations and Japan, China and South Korea. The other is the East
Asia Summit--which is also called a summit of ASEAN plus Three plus Three, with theadditional presence of the leaders of Australia, India and New Zealand.

3When a serious incident such as North Korea’s nuclear test happens, we have a tendency toprioritize measures against such an urgent issue while procrastinating on efforts to devise
long-term strategies. Japan should take advantage of the upcoming regional summit meetings toformulate a strategic vision for forging a future order in Asia.
(This is the text of an article by Prof. SHIRAISHI Takashi, Vice President of the National
Graduate Institute for Policy Studies and Member of the Council on East AsianCommunity, which originally appeared in the “Insights into the World” column of the“Daily Yomiuri” on October 22, 2006)

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