2005: the year of Greater Asia?
Tokyo (AsiaNews) Asia's mass media has been increasingly using the term East Asia Community (EAC). In November 2005, ASEAN's ten member states as well as China, Japan and South Korea will meet in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) for the first East Asia summit. So significant is the event that some media outlets have called 2005 the first year of the EAC.
Institutionally, it might still be a dream, but there are signs that the century-old hope might become reality. Here is its chronology.
Hope and disappointment.
On January 1, 1905, General Anatolii Stessel, commander of the Russian garrison in Port Arthur, in China, surrendered to Japanese forces. Six months later, Japan wrapped up its land success with a knock-out naval victory against Russia's Baltic fleet in the Sea of Japan.
Sun Yat-sen, a Chinese revolutionary who subsequently overthrew the Qing Dynasty, read about the outcome of the Russo-Japanese War whilst in Europe. On his way home, he was stopped by many jubilant Arabs at the Suez Canal who told him: "An Eastern country defeated a Western power. We shall walk in the footsteps of the Easterners."
For many Asian nationalists, Japan became the beacon of Asian liberation from Western imperialism. However, far from spearheading Asian liberation, Japan imposed a protectorate on Korea, then annexed it outright.
Following a border incident in Manchuria 1931 and the battle of the Marco Polo Bridge in Nanjing in 1937 which marked the beginning of the Sino-Japanese war, Japan began its mad conquest of China.
Hope reborn in South-East Asia
An Asian nation killed the dream of Asia unity in the bud, but not for long. By the end of the 1960s, the idea was taken up by four South-East Asian countriesThailand, Indonesia, Philippines and Singaporewho formed an association in order to build up their economies, achieve greater national security and maintain greater independence vis-à-vis the US, China and Japan. The Association of South-East Asian Nations or ASEAN was thus born.
Over time the initial goals became somewhat diluted as the association started incorporating countries like Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia once considered enemies.
Eventually, China and Japan (as well as South Korea) informally joined the association and started to play a constructive role so much so that the group is increasingly referred to as ASEAN+3.
For Japan, this represents a major break with the past. Seventy years ago, its government took advantage of the dream of Asian unity to pursue the goal of "Great East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere" which was nothing more than Japanese imperialism in disguise.
Today, attitudes have changed; case in point: when ASEAN was on the verge of collapse following a severe financial crisis in 1997, Japan bailed out the association by providing financial assistance and technical aid.
The cancer of hegemony
In a speech titled "Great Asianism" given in Kobe (Japan) in 1924, Sun Yat-sen contended that Oriental culture based on "rule of right" which honours morality was superior to Western culture based on the "rule of might" and warned against the danger of Japan following the West. Japan paid no need and followed the West.
Ironically, the warning of the founder of modern China could now be addressed not to Japan, but to China itself.
Ultimately, without the two Asian giants the EAC cannot take off. But cooperation between the two cannot fully develop unless they do not find some common ground. And so far they have not.
Beijing never fails to remind Japan about its abysmal war-time record and Japan is always pointing the finger at China's unceasing military build-up.
The Chinese also have a hard time dropping their "Middle Empire" complex and the Japanese are still unable to get over the "We are Number One" (at least in Asia) syndrome.
Given these and other difficulties many observers think that for the time being the EAC remains a pipe dream.
None the less, some a trying to counter the prevailing pessimism. In a recent editorial, Asahi Shimbun has reacted to the nay-sayers by quoting one of the intellectual fathers of the European idea, Count Coudenhove-Kalergi, who said: "Every great event has started with a utopian idea and ended in its achievement".
Sixty years ago, Europeans could only dream of a Greater Europe; now, they have it. Asians, the editorial writer points out, should thus not give up their dream.
.png)
03/05/2021 09:59
