America S China Dilemma

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FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK—Daniel A. Métraux

JAPANESE POLITICS: AN INTERVIEW WITH VETERAN KOMEITO DIETMAN ENDO OTOHIKO

Every two years this writer takes a group of his Mary Baldwin College students to Tokyo to explore the greater Kanto region, visit schools and other sites of cultural interest and to interview veteran Komeito Diet member, Representative Endo Otohiko. Endo, who served as Senior Vice-Minister of Finance in the last LDP-Komeito government, gave a brief lecture on the current state of Japanese politics and then took several questions. Here is a summary of some of his main points:

The 2009 general election might have been a watershed for Japan. The opposition Democratic party promised wholesale change and came to power with an approval rating of over 80 percent according to some polls. Such high numbers are unheard of in Japan, but sadly these favorable ratings have fallen to about 20 percent. Japanese are desperately looking for strong leadership, but unfortunately the Hatoyama cabinet has failed to deliver on any of its key promises. Political leaders in Japan are weak and are unable to come up with new ideas to deal with social and economic problems. There is an almost total dearth of able strong leadership. The result is that many Japanese are looking for a realistic third alternative, but to date, despite the proliferation of new splinter parties, nothing has emerged to fill the gap.

Today, perhaps more than at any other time since the early 1950s, the Japanese public is very insecure. The economy has been eroding for a very long time now and there is no strong leadership willing to make the tough decisions that can lead us out of this mess. The elderly are afraid that they will lose their sources of income, middle-aged workers fear that they will lose their jobs, and worst of all, a full 20 percent of young people looking for jobs cannot find work. Many Japanese companies have greatly reduced the number of young people they are hiring and today even graduates from some of the more prestigious universities in Japan are unable to launch their careers as quickly as they would like.

The sad fact is that Japan is experiencing an extended period of what now seems to be inevitable decline. We are burying ourselves in a sea of debt, a per capita debt that is much higher than in the US. We have experienced 20 years of almost relentless decline and there are no prospects of a major turnaround on the horizon. Per capita income has dropped drastically compared to other nations as well. We now rank 20th in the world, even now behind Singapore in Asia. The drastic decline in our birthrate means a paucity of young people to enter the work force. Overall we need a paradigm shift in economic thinking with more emphasis on social welfare—and more done to encourage women into the work force. [Two years ago Endo suggested allowing the immigration of well educated younger Asians to broaden the pool of young people in Japan.]

Japanese are facing considerable dislocation in their social lives. The traditional extended family has long since broken down. Elderly are now living mainly on their own with little means of physical support—Japan is not prepared to take proper care of its elderly. Young people are often also on their own. Being alone in Japan is very hard because there is no real sense of community, no sense of being part of a neighborhood, especially in urban areas. One idea should be the creation of group homes for mobile elderly people where they live together and pool their resources. We are further torn apart by the decline in the system of lifetime employment. One of the sad results is a shockingly high rate of suicide—especially among the late middle-age group in their late 40s and early 50s. Today Japan’s suicide rate is 24 in 100,000 compared to 6 for the UK.

There are great dangers in our foreign affairs as well. The current government has shown some degree of hostility towards the United States and our security treaty with the U.S. This is indeed unfortunate. Japan simply does not have the resources to build a major military of its own and if we did, it could cause tension in our relations with neighboring states such as the Koreas and China. The Chinese are perfectly content with a strong regional role in Asia—and it provides Japan with a strong bulwark as well. It is indeed unfortunate that much of the Japanese public is out of touch concerning the reality of Japan’s position in Asia. We simply cannot go it alone, we cannot build up a major military force, and we need to maintain good relations with the United States. A strong American presence here is our greatest guarantor of peace.

There are many in Okinawa and the rest of Japan who wan to reduce or terminate U.S. bases in Okinawa and elsewhere in Japan. But that would b a serious mistake and is an example of the myopic thinking of too many Japanese. We can find a new place for the Futenma base in Okinawa and we should not allow the base and its marines to migrate to Guam or anywhere else

The Komeito is now a viable third force in Japanese politics. We must work to foster a stronger security system for our own people—to improve social welfare, to improve educational standards, and to provide for the elderly. We are not interested in any coalition politics at this time and we will never form a coalition with the ruling Democrats. This party has no ideas, no clear sense of direction, it stands for nothing.

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The following essays were prepared for local newspapers and journals by Daniel Metraux from August 2009 to June 2010.

AMERICA’S CHINA DILEMMA

Three years ago when I was on a group Fulbright study tour of China, we met with a Deputy US Ambassador at the US Embassy in Beijing. He told us that with the possible exception of Canada, the most important American relationship was with China. “China is critically important not only for American trade, but also for the health of the American economy.” He noted that because China has many billions of dollars stashed in its vaults due to the huge imbalance of US-China trade, our ability to borrow money from China is critical to our economic well-being.

Our relationship with China brings us into a “Catch-22” situation. On the one hand it is clear that China’s vastly undervalued currency plus its unfair trade practices are truly destroying American manufacturing. Manufacturing jobs are crucial to the American economy because what we make often stays at home and manufacturing jobs often pay much better than service-sector jobs. These jobs are very important to the purchasing power needed to revive our economy. Also, manufacturing jobs create more jobs “downstream” than do service-sector jobs (manufacturing a car, for example, requires parts-makers and salesmen to sell the cars).

Millions of US manufacturing jobs have disappeared since China joined the WTO (World Trade Organization) in 2001. Since joining WTO China’s trade initiatives have badly hurt key US industries such as furniture, cookware, textiles, paper, tires, and steel. A key factor here is China’s very cheap currency which makes Chinese goods very cheap here but makes US goods very expensive in China.

China takes many of its billions of dollars and buys U.S. treasury securities. The U.S. government relies on these Chinese dollars to fund its borrowing. The stimulus packages of the last Bush and current Obama administration are largely funded with borrowed Chinese money. If the Chinese stopped lending us their money and invested it elsewhere, the American economy would be in desperate shape.

If the US allows the prevailing situation to continue, our manufacturing base will continue to decline.China is now poised to move into high tech manufacturing --- including the manufacture of tens of millions of automobiles. Cheap autos will further undermine our auto industry.

We could brand China a currency manipulator and try to get it to up the value of its currency, but recent US administrations have been reluctant to annoy China because we need to borrow money from them. But at the same time we cannot afford to let our manufacturing base erode even further. So China really has us in a Catch-22 situation!

A TALE OF TWOCITIES AND TWO COUNTRIES GOING DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS: SEOUL AND TOKYO

(SeoulRepublic of Korea) It is a cold rainy night at the end of March, 2010. I am here with a delegation from MaryBaldwinCollege to strengthen our ties with our companion universities and institutions in both Japan and Korea. I get hungry and walk out of my hotel into the street below in the center of the city. The thoroughfares are blazing bright and there are hundreds of stalls and stores open selling food, cosmetics, clothing, jewelry, and many other goods. Thousands of people are milling around, smiling, having a good time while shopping and eating. The night people of Seoul are young, healthy, and not afraid to spend money.

Twenty years ago the same street would also been alive with merchants peddling their wares, but the scene might have been quite different. Back then there were many beggars and ladies of the night, the merchants were offering ultra-cheap prices for knock-off clothes, watches, sneakers and the like. Over the past two nights I have only seen two beggars, the products for sale were of good quality at higher prices, and there were no fake Rolexes any where. The streets were filled with well-dressed young men and boys with reasonable amounts of money to spend.

The streets which 20 years ago had many slum areas filled with earthen homes with only rudimentary facilities today consist of towering modern apartments and the downtown areas of Seoul house tall beautifully designed skyscrapers. There are posh department stores, fancy cars, and other visible signs of a vigorous successful economy.

Both Seoul and Korea are alive and well. Fifty years ago South Korea was a dirt poor country with an average per capita income of $100. Today, however, after years of very hard work, strong government initiatives, and a successful democratic revolution in 1987,South Korea is a thriving, vigorous democracy with annual incomes of $25,000 or more a year. Our sister school, Sungshin Women’s University, boasts two incredibly modern and high-tech campuses that would be the envy of any American college.

Near the KoreanPeninsula lies another land traveling in a very different direction, Japan. The streets of Tokyo and Kyoto were quiet when we visited there last week. Our sister institutions have nowhere near the modern facilities and technology of SungshinUniversity. While young Korean college graduates are not having much difficulty in getting jobs, their Japanese counterparts are struggling to find any companies that are thinking of hiring.

Japan is a nation that is sinking in its own debt. Ever since their economy collapsed in the early 1990s, the Japanese government has thrown stimulus package after package hoping to revive the economy –and the Japanese national debt is much deeper per capita than the US.Japan still looks wealthy because people and companies are living off their once vast savings, but a day of reckoning will come. An equally deep crisis is Japan’s aging and declining population. Japanese women are marrying very late if at all and are having very few babies—so there are fewer workers to pay taxes to pay for the growing numbers of aged Japanese.

The streets of Seoul were once filled with wealthy bargain hunting Japanese and Americans, but today they are both gone and have been replaced by bus loads of Chinese tourists as well as millions of middle-class Koreans. Times have certainly changed.

THE GHOSTS CHINESE CAMP AND BODIE CALIFORNIA

The concept of ghost towns has always fascinated me. They provide windows with which one can examine the past.Visiting my daughter Katie in the foothills of the Sierras not far from Lake Tahoe in northern California, one finds many deserted settlements from the mid-1800s when tens of thousands of prospectors came here searching for gold. But when I stumbled across the largely deserted village of Chinese Camp, I decided to do some exploring and research.

Chinese Camp:

As a scholar and teacher of Asian history, the very idea of a Chinese ghost town in California generated even greater excitement. It was thus with great anticipation that I spent the better part of a day in May of 2007 exploring the remains of “Chinese Camp” deep in the heart of Gold Rush country in northern California. A return visit in May 2010 permitted deeper insights into the lives of the thousands of Chinese who once sought their fortunes there. The ordinary traveler just passing by would see nothing but a bunch of decaying and deserted buildings—it is not a place of any beauty—but if you look at the old iron doors on what used to be Chinese stores, it is perhaps possible to transport oneself back in history to a time when the village was humming with several thousand Chinese.

Today any casual motorist driving along California Route 49 through TuolumneCountyin western California on their way to nearby YosemiteNational Parkwould hardly recognize the clump of abandoned buildings adorned by a sign “Chinese Camp” as being one of the biggest and most significant early settlements of Chinese in the United States. It was a placer-mining center settled by Chinese miners in 1849. Much work was done in the 1850s, and the piles of soil and gravel turned over in the search for gold can still be seen in nearly every gulch. The placer mines of this area are credited with producing $2.5 million in gold. Today the town consists of numerous Gold-Rush era buildings, most of them abandoned.Several ramshackle dwellings on the outskirts of town house a few remaining residents, but there are no Chinese left here and one can’t even buy a dish of chow mein. The last of the Chinese left in the 1920s leaving behind one of the most significant Chinese ghost towns in the United States.

The late 1840s were a period of growing desperation for many Chinese. Wide spread starvation accompanied domestic rebellions and further incursions by the West in the wake of the Opium War (1839-42). At the beginning of the year 1849 there were in the state only fifty-four Chinese. At the news of the gold discovery a steady immigration commenced which continued through the 1870s and early 1880s during which time an average of 4,000 Chinese a year immigrated to the United States. By the time the United States halted Chinese immigration in 1882, over 300,000 Chinese had entered the United States, most of them living in California. This increase in their numbers, rapid even in comparison with the general increase in population, was largely due to the fact that previous to the year 1869 when it became possible to travel across the U.S by rail,China was nearer to the shores of California than was the eastern portion of the United States. Another circumstance which contributed to the heavy influx of Chinese was the fact that news of the gold discovery found southeastern China in poverty and ruin caused by the Taiping rebellion of the 1850s and early 1860s.

When news of the California Gold Rush reached Canton in 1848, many thousands of Chinese boarded boats to “Gum Shan,” or “GoldMountain” Many of the Chinese made their way to TuolumneCounty to such towns as Sonora, Columbia, Jamestown and Chinese Camp where they staked their claims and built significant Chinese communities. The vast majority of Chinese were young men looking for a quick strikeso that they could return to China, buy a plot of land and start their own families. The few women who came were mainly prostitutes, virtual “slaves,” although a few Chinese merchants brought their wives. This was a man’s world, lonely, and very isolated surrounded by a hostile white population, but the dream of wealth and memories of the misery of life in China gave them incentives to stay.

The first settlement here was known as CampSalvado after a group of Savadorians who worked as miners, but a group of Cantonese miners arrived by 1849. Who they were and why they came remains a bit of a mystery. In 1849, a group of three dozen Cantonese miners arrived at the Camp and began prospecting. Where they came from remains a mystery. Some accounts imply that a ship’s captain abandoned his ship in San Francisco bringing his entire crew with him. Another version has it that the Chinese were employed by a group of English speculators. What is known is that the mining brought large amounts of gold which in turn brought thousands of additional miners, including first hundreds and later thousands of Chinese. Miners including many Chinese developed a number of towns, but most Chinese settled in what became known as “Chinese Camp.” Facing virulent discrimination in other areas, and after being driven away from other diggings, or having just arrived in the country, the Chinese miners gravitated here, feeling safe and comfortable among others of their nationality. There were some white miners there, but by the mid-1850s the Chinese residents of the settlement vastly outnumbered the whites.