Video: Japanese Only

Speakers：
Masahiro Akiyama, President, Tokyo Foundation

Yoji Koda, Retired Admiral and Former commander in chief of the Self-Defense Fleet

Bonji Ohara, Research Fellow, Tokyo Foundation

Moderator：
Yasushi Kudo, President of The Genron NPO

Japan and China obviously hope to avoid military conflict over a group of islands in the East China Sea, but they are having difficulty finding a good idea to reduce tension in the area for lack of mutual confidence, according to Japanese defense policy experts.

At a time when China's increasing military presence in the Western Pacific has raised concern among neighboring countries, about 40 percent of 2,000 Japanese intellectuals polled in a recent Genron NPO-sponsored questionnaire observed that conflicts can occur in the East China Sea and in the South China Sea.

A military skirmish or an accidental incident might occur in the East China Sea, but an armed conflict is unlikely to happen in the region, according to Tokyo Foundation President Masahiro Akiyama. China clearly hopes to control the South China Sea, under its national security policy or for its own defense, but the situation is different in the East China Sea, Akiyama said.

In the South China Sea, military conflicts have actually occurred in recent years as the countries involved are at odds with each other over ownership of territories and　natural resources in the region. Meanwhile, the East China Sea has become a theater of a territorial dispute between Japan and China over a group of uninhabited islands.

The Chinese have claimed sovereignty over the islets, called the Senkaku Islands by Japan and the Diaoyu Islands by China. The Chinese have no intention of controlling a wider part of the East China Sea, but the problem is that China has maintained a hard stance toward the dispute over the Japanese-controlled islands because any lukewarm response is expected to trigger criticism against its leadership at home, Akiyama noted.

Akiyama, who formerly served as deputy director-general of the Defense Agency, the predecessor of the Ministry of Defense, was one of the three speakers at a Genron NPO-organized discussion on the national security and military situation in the Western Pacific. Yasushi Kudo, president of The Genron NPO, served as moderator at the discussion.

Yoji Koda, a retired admiral and former commander in chief of the Self-Defense Fleet, and Tokyo Foundation Research Fellow Bonji Ohara broadly agreed with Akiyama's assessment of the situation around the disputed waters in the East China Sea, where Japanese and Chinese coast guard ships operate to demonstrate their presence to each other.

"As long as Tokyo and Beijing, particularly Beijing, maintain logical thinking (over the dispute involving the islands), the possibility of an intentional use of force is almost nil in the region," Koda said. But if China miscalculates its relations with the United States, for example, when it believes that an era of two superpowers has truly come, and China can persuade the United States to accept its action and not move against it, "China is likely to resort to adventurism" in the region, Koda said.

China may do so when it understands that relations between Japan and the United States have become very weak, and when it needs to take an externally strong policy for domestic reasons, he said.

Akiyama noted that a military conflict is unlikely to occur between Japan and China in the East China Sea, in light of the Japan-U.S. security treaty. Washington understands that the disputed islands are under Japanese rule and based on this stance, the United States is ready to take action under the treaty if any Japanese territory is attacked, he said. "This has fairly strong implications for China," Akiyama said.

Now that Japan and China have their air and naval forces operating in close proximity in the disputed waters, the possibility of an unexpected incident occurring cannot be ruled out, said Ohara, who has worked with the Maritime Self-Defense Force.

China does not want to go to war in this part of the world and it is very careful about the use of its military power, but the Chinese are concerned that Japan may take some military action over the territorial dispute, he said. In January this year, a Chinese Communist Party organization carried out a computerized simulation on the situation in the East China Sea, and officials involved are said to have sighed with relief after the simulation because only a small military conflict was indicated, according to Ohara.

Because Japan and China apparently have the intentions of avoiding a military conflict in the East China Sea, "the America factor is very important in this region," Ohara said.

China has been taking actions to demonstrate its military strength in response to Japan's actions or the remarks by Japanese political leaders since last year, according to Ohara. This does not mean that Chinese warships have entered waters around the disputed islands, but China has carried out a military drill in the Western Pacific and Chinese warplanes sometimes fly far from the Chinese mainland, he said. China also announced the establishment of the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) east of its territories last year.

Topics that have military implications, not problems concerning law-enforcement organizations, sometimes came up for discussion among Chinese officials last year, he noted. In these circumstances, "the (Chinese) People's Liberation Army itself is very stretched," Ohara said. The East Sea Fleet of China is said to have raised its operational level by one notch from Jan. 1, he said.

China actively approached the United States from around April last year in an attempt to realize a leaders' meeting between the two countries, according to Ohara. A summit actually took place between the United States and China in June, but this rather revealed differences in their views about problems of mutual concern, Ohara said. The ensuing disclosure of the ADIZ by China was obviously aimed at reminding the United States that a crisis exists in this part of the world, he said. "I heard that China had supposed that if the United States believes something must be done to contain a crisis in the region, it would move to check Japan's action," Ohara said.

According to The Genron NPO's Kudo, about 60 percent of those polled in the questionnaire replied that Japan must formally propose to China that measures should be studied for avoiding an accidental incident in the disputed waters in the East China Sea, including establishing a hotline for communication in an emergency between the two countries.

When a group of Japanese experts visited China in November and met with Chinese foreign relations researchers, the Chinese side responded favorably about building a system between Japan and China to avoid accidental incidents around the disputed territories, according to Koda. This was "the first positive reaction in a sense" from the Chinese on the matter, he said.

This may be taken as indicating that China also regards the situation as unfavorable in the whole of the East China Sea, but it would be difficult to actually build a crisis management system immediately between the two countries, Koda said. Hurdles that must be cleared on the part of China, particularly the military and the Communist Party, before realizing such an idea must be high, he said.

Koda said that if an incident occurred between Japan and China in the East China Sea, the United States is expected to step in, officially or unofficially, even without a request for its involvement from either side. But he also said that relations will have to be established between the two countries' top leaders so that they can talk to each other anytime in a frank atmosphere.

The proposed hotline between Japan and China, if realized, would be ideal, but it seems to be almost infeasible in the current situation, Ohara said. Even if Japan formally proposes establishing a hotline between the two countries, China is expected to take it only as a gesture, he said.

Anti-Japanese feeling in China involves not only the territorial dispute in the East China Sea, but hard-liners in China also make issue of what they see as rightist leanings and militarist moves in Japan, according to Ohara. Because these people regard statements or actions by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and other political leaders in such a perspective, it must be very difficult to change the current atmosphere toward building a system to defuse a crisis over the disputed islands, he said.

Japan has shown its readiness to build a crisis management or accident prevention system to China, but any proposals will be meaningless unless they are taken as necessary by the Chinese side, Akiyama said.

Now that the United States is becoming fairly concerned about the territorial dispute between Japan and China, as well as the situation in the East China Sea, a tripartite crisis management system may be built among the United States, Japan and China, he said. This may appear attractive to China, Akiyama said.