Given on Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's remarks on South China Sea disputes during the gathering of G20 leaders in Turkey, he is highly likely to raise the issue again at the forthcoming APEC meeting and East Asia summit, emphasizing freedom of navigation and indirectly targeting China's reclamation projects. But as an outsider to the disputes in the South China Sea, Japan will only expose the absurdity of its stance if Abe raises the issue.
Hopefully, Abe will refrain from taking such a ridiculous step, because it will be good neither for Japan nor regional stability. In fact, for quite sometime now, some Japanese politicians have been saying that China - because of its economic slowdown, increased military budgets and lack of military transparency - has been exporting deflation to and destabilizing the Asia-Pacific region. The truth, however, is that the South China Sea disputes are just another card that Abe is trying to use to hype the "China threat" theory.
China's rapid economic growth, which made it overtake Japan as the world's second-largest economy in the world, is the main cause of worry for Japan. China's rise has fundamentally changed the geopolitical pattern of the Asia-Pacific. As a result, Japan has lost much of its influence on regional economic development and its leaders have lost their psychological balance.
Japanese leaders' mentality suggests they don't have enough courage to face the changing reality of the times, which is not good for Japan. If they don't change their mentality, they will only hurt the cooperation between China and Japan, and prevent bilateral relations from improving.
Some of the problems that Japan blames China for are its own making. For example, it is Japan that has exported deflation to the Asia-Pacific and other regions of the world because of its two-decade-long economic downturn. And even though this has curbed the economic growth in the region and elsewhere, China has never blamed Japan because Chinese leaders know the problem has its roots in economic factors.
Accusing China of massively increasing its military budget is both groundless and ironical, because Japan's military expenditure has been growing with each passing year. Worse, the Abe administration pressured the Japanese parliament to pass a law that allows its troops to take part in overseas conflicts in the name of "collective security". By doing so, Abe even violated Japan's Constitution and went against the majority opinion of Japan's constitutional scholars.
If Japanese leaders continue with their mindless policies, they will end up dealing another big blow to the mutual trust between China and Japan. Besides, any other country that pursues economic cooperation with Japan will find itself in a fix.
Given China's growing economic potential and comprehensive capability, the country's leadership is increasingly confident of its decisions and will not change its policies just to please Japan. At times the Chinese leadership needs to change its policies, but they are changed only to protect or promote the country's interests. For example, China has not changed its policy of making efforts to improve relations with Japan despite the Abe administration's accusations against Beijing.
It's time Japanese leaders followed the example of their Chinese counterparts and stopped blaming China for all of Japan's ills and rectified their mistakes.
The author, Zhou Yongsheng, is a professor of Japanese studies at China Foreign Affairs University.
