Election adds to Tokyo-Beijing tension

By Deborah Cameron

September 8, 2005

JAPANESE Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's expected election win this weekend has the potential to create a troubling predicament for Australia.

Amid rising tension between Japan and China, Australia may be forced to take sides, according to a lecturer in Australian studies at Kanagawa University, Hiroya Sugita.

Japan is Australia's largest trading partner but China, the most rapidly growing market for Australian exports, is seen as the engine of future growth.

"If it was between Japan and China, then Australia would choose China," Dr Sugita said, arguing that Australia would most likely look after its long-term economic interest.

In the tense and periodically venomous relationship between China and Japan, the next flare-up will come when Mr Koizumi visits the Yasukuni Shrine, a Tokyo memorial that honours Japan's war dead, including war criminals.

Although Mr Koizumi has not named a date, political observers say that a visit to the shrine is inevitable before the end of the year. It would be an affront to China, which suffered Japanese tyranny before and during World War II.

There is also friction over Japan's quest for a United Nations Security Council seat, which China opposes. Australia supported the bid but at the same time began free-trade talks with China.

Prime Minister John Howard has consistently tried to weave a path between the two. Speaking in Japan earlier this year, he said Australia had "no better trading partner in the world than Japan". Months later he said Australia was "unashamed in developing our relations with China" and would do everything he could "to ensure it develops further".

Crucial to the future between the two rivals and Australia is the identity of Mr Koizumi's successor.

The Chinese Government, which probably believed until recently that Mr Koizumi would lose the election, has made it plain that it does not want to deal with him, letting slide Japan's overtures about a leaders' summit.

Although there has been some discussion here about Mr Koizumi being drafted for an extended term, the Prime Minister says that he intends to retire, as planned, next year. There are also questions from political commentators about whether Mr Koizumi's passion for domestic economic reform is matched by his interest in the diplomacy involved in rebuilding co-operation with China.

Dr Sugita doubts that Mr Koizumi could widen an election mandate for domestic economic reform into a campaign on regional relationships when there has been no national debate about the likely economic and strategic consequences.

■Mr Koizumi's coalition is on track to win a comfortable majority of 252 seats in the 480-seat lower house of parliament and could win up to 300, according to a newspaper poll of voters.

The poll, conducted by the conservative Sankei Shimbun, was the latest to show that voters support plans by Mr Koizumi and his Liberal Democratic Party to privatise the postal system as a catalyst to enact other major economic and social reforms.

A stable majority of 252 seats would allow the LDP and its coalition partner, the Buddhist-backed New Komeito, to chair all committees in the lower house, easing the passage of legislation.
