Japan out to rival US

China pursues a peaceful and friendly "Pacific Dream" based on the principles of equality, mutual trust, mutual respect and mutual benefit. Beijing does not want a new "Cold War" in the Asia-Pacific or any other region. But the Obama administration, especially the neo-conservatives within it, are pushing for deeper alliance with Japan and thus worsening the situation in the Asia-Pacific. The US is even exhorting Japan to play a bigger role in Washington's strategic pivot toward Asia in order to contain China.

Japan, too, has its dream, the dream of military revivalism, as media reports in the West have already pointed out. It's not difficult to understand Japanese right-wing groups' strategy. On the surface, Japan seems to be helping the US counterbalance China and maintain its primacy in the region. But in reality, it will take advantage of the US to whitewash its wartime atrocities, shake off its alliance with the Americans and revise its pacifist constitution to rebuild its war arsenal.

Japan cannot accept the fact that China has relegated it to the world's third-largest economy. Besides, Japan has never been happy following the US. It seems that it has now set its eyes on seizing the dominant position in the Asia-Pacific from the US.

But such an ambition will remain a "daydream" for Japan's right-wing forces, because it goes against the trend of the times. Asian countries, along with the Japanese public, will never allow that to happen. Also, Tokyo will not violate the salient principles of the US-Japan alliance that easily. Moreover, given the bitter lessons of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, the Americans will not allow Japan to hold other countries to ransom again.

But the fact is that Japanese militarism has not been uprooted even more than 60 years after World War II. And there are signs that it is rearing its head again.

If the US neo-conservatives do not stop fueling Japan's ambitions to suit their antediluvian Cold War policies, it will be too late for them to do anything once Japanese right-wingers open "Pandora's box" of militarism.

The author is executive director of the Strategy Study Center, China Foundation for International Studies, and China's former senior official to APEC.

(China Daily 05/16/2013 page9)