China, Japan aim to keep peace in Korea

Press, 27 December 1979, Page 12

China, Japan aim to keep peace in Korea

By

DONALD KIRK

in Tokyo

Old enemies, Japan and China appear to have embarked on a joint policy to defend their interests in East Asia.

When Japan’s Prime Minister, Mr Masayoshi Ohira, arrived in Peking this month on a five-day visit, he blithely described the Japanese conquest of much of the Chinese mainland in the 1930 s as “against the natural flow of history.” He and China’s Premier, Hua Guofeng, had just agreed to co-operate in defusing tensions in the region’s traditional powder keg, the Korean peninsula.

The essence of the deal was that Japan and China would renew efforts to reunite the two Koreas, but diplomatic analysts in Japan viewed it as confirming that China would press North Korea not to threaten the South militarily. “The last thing China can afford is a war on the Korean peninsula in which the Soviet Union could gain the upper hand,” said a Western military source.

True, Hua appeared to have startled Mr Ohira with a suggestion that China and Japan “join hands in democracybuilding in South Korea,” but Ohira easily brushed aside that notion by countering that every country had the right to adopt its own “system.”

Japanese officials try to maintain the myth that “we deal equally with China and the Soviet Union,” but Mr Ohira has criticised the dispatch of fresh Soviet troops to the region, and has frequently expressed concern about the presence of a Soviet division on three or four small Japanese-claimed islands overrun by Russian forces in the last week of World War 11. It was little more than a year ago — in August, 1978 — that Japan and China elicited outraged denunciation by the Kremlin for concluding a treaty of peace and friendship that Soviet officials viewed as tantamount to a military alliance.

In fact, the Chinese and Japanese leaders appear far

more concerned about expanding trade. Mr Ohira took to Peking an agreement for long-term loans of $l5OO million for six huge construction projects. The agreement commits Japan to lending $2OO million in the first year — and gives China 30 years to repay, with a 10-year grace period and 3 per cent annual interest thereafter. While Mr Ohira talked over the loan at a threehour lunch with deputy Premier Deng Xiaoping, representatives of the two coun tries signed a deal for drilling for oil and gas in the Bohai Sea. The agreement requires Japan to spend more than $2OO million on exploration, while China and Japan will divide the billiondollar cost of installing equipment. Mr Ohira insisted at his meeting with Deng that under no circumstances would Japan provide military aid or invest in military projects, but diplomatic analysts believe the military implications of exploration

in the Bohai Sea may be too great to ignore. “How will the two countries respond with Soviet ships running around the region?” asked a Western

analyst. "And how can anyone expect the Russians not to escalate their forces?" The Kremlin may attempt to counter Chinese influence in North Korea by increas-

Ing military aid and encouraging tension along the demilitarised zone. "The Chinese might be afraid to go too far in promoting peace in Korea for fear of losing their North Korean ally,” said one source. The Soviet Union will undoubtedly read military significance into the development projects for which Japan is extending loans, since they will presumably supply the power and some of the materials needed to buttress China’s ill-equipped military' machine. For Japan, the pay-off is profits. Trade with China reached $3.3 billion in the first half of this year and is on its way to an estimated $6.5 billion for the year, more than seven times as high as in 1972.

"With enormous development projects,” a Japanese diplomat observed, "the Chinese will have still more of a capacity to import.” Such is the essence of the new co-prosperity enunciated by Mr Ohira and Chairman Hua some 40 years after Japanese troops invaded to “open up the China market.” O.F.N.S. Copyright.