Julie Bishop navigates diplomatic storm over China-Japan rivalry

On Wednesday afternoon a storm cloud swept across the face of China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

17/02/2016: Julie Bishop meets with the Chinese minister of foreign affairs Wang Yi at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing, China. Sanghee Liu/The Australian

Just after 1.15pm on Wednesday, inside a communist-style conference room in Beijing, a storm cloud swept across the face of China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Julie Bishop watched as her counterpart Wang’s voice began to soar as he delivered a blunt warning to Australia of the ­danger of playing favourites in the Pacific.

The Chinese and Australian media assembled in the Foreign Ministry conference room sat to attention as Wang let rip.

Australia, he said, should remember Japan’s wartime history and take into account the feelings of people in Asia when forging closer defence links with Tokyo.

“We do hope, in its military co-operation with Japan, Australia will take into account this histor­ical context and take into consideration also the feelings of people of Asian countries because of that part of history,” Wang said.

Bishop kept a poker face while Wang spoke of Japan in a way that returned Diggers once did over a beer in RSLs in the 1950s. Remember the war. Not to be trusted.

The Australian delegation sitting in the row, which included Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade chief Peter Varghese, had reason to be surprised. In Bishop’s 90-minute meeting with Wang he had not raised the issue of Australia’s growing defence ties with Japan. But in those few seconds, Wang gave Australia the clearest of messages: you can be friends with China but you are playing with the devil on Japan.

For Bishop, it was a reminder that Australia’s delicate dance between its largest trading partner and its closest Pacific allies, the US and Japan, is an awkward one, haunted by history and blood, ancient­ rivalries and a hunger for strategic dominance.

More than 70 years on, China cannot forget the war and is uneasy­ about Japan’s decision to reinterpret its pacifist constitution to embrace a more outward defenc­e and security policy. It is also locked in a bitter standoff with Japan over disputed islands in the East China Sea.

This week Bishop has straddled these bickering giants of Asia on the one visit, sitting down with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo one day, and Wang the next.

The Foreign Minister has navig­ated around the rocks deftly given that she has had to state a diplomatic white lie, best summar­ised by her comments to Japan’s national press club on Tuesday.

“We don’t believe that either nation is forcing us to choose or place a priority over another,” she said of Japan and China.

“We don’t think it is helpful to seek to prioritise friendships, Australia seeks to be a friend to all.”

In truth, both China and Japan want to woo Australia onto their side in an increasingly divided and contested Pacific.

In Japan, Bishop was feted by the Abe government, with both Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and Defence Minister Gen Naka­tani pushing for ever-closer strat­egic and defence ties with Australia, as well as closer three-way co-operation with the US in the western Pacific. What better way to cap this trend, they told Bishop, than for Australia to buy submarines from Japan, cementing a strategic triangle between Australia, the US and Japan, including­ on territorially contested islands in the western Pacific.

While it was not openly stated, the unspoken target of Japan’s plan is to build a strategic hedge against a fast-rising China, which is building a blue-water navy to spread strategic reach through the East and South China seas. To Wang’s obvious frustration, Australia is a willing partner in this.

While Bishop rightly says that Australia seeks to be a friend to all, when it comes to defence and securi­ty we clearly see Japan as a far better friend than China.

Where Australia’s relationship with Tokyo, including strategic and military ties, is now as strong as it has ever been, with almost no major bilateral disagreement beyond­ whaling, the relationship with China remains civil but fraught.

Wang, who had a famously torrid­ run-in with Bishop in 2013 over Australia’s criticism of China declaring an air defence identification zone in the East China Sea, was more welcoming to Bishop this time around — but he was not uncritical.

He said he appreciated the fact that Australia did not take sides in territorial disputes in the East and South China seas, but it was clear there remain stark differences betwee­n Canberra and Beijing over the issue.

Chief among these is Australia’s frustration over the placement of military facilities on artificial islands built by China in the disputed areas of the South China Sea.

While in China, Bishop reminded its ministers of the claim made by President Xi Jinping in Washington in October when he said China did not intend to milit­arise the islands. This was despite China having already built a milit­ary-grade runway on one of them.

Sources say the President’s bizarre­ comments surprised some senior people inside his own government, forcing China to make the awkward argument that it is allowed to place military assets on the islands on self-defence grounds. This, they say, does not amount to militarisation.

At his press conference with Bishop on Wednesday, Wang was caught out by a breaking story, widely reported, that surface-to-air missile systems had been placed on an island claimed by China.

While he initially dismissed the story as a fiction of the Western media, he then thundered about China’s right to defend itself. “As for the limited and necessary self-defence facilities China has built on the islands and reefs stationed by Chinese personnel, this is consistent with the right to self-preservation and self-protect­ion China has under international law so there should be no question about it,” Wang said.

The Foreign Minister also made it clear that he disagreed with Australia’s support of the right of The Philippines to take China to the International Court of Justice to seek a ruling on the legal status of artificial islands create­d by China.

Because the case does not seek to rule on the substance of the ­dispute, Australia can safely back the right of The Philippines to seek arbitration while maintaining its stated neutrality over the issue ­itself.

But China smells a rat, with Wang claiming yesterday that there was “a hidden political agenda” in the court case and that China did not believe Australia should support it.

Despite these disagreements, Wang was otherwise positive about the state of the relationship, touting the mutual benefit of ­tourism, free trade, education links and joint innovation agenda as “a new phase of developing a comprehensive strategic partnership” with Australia.

But the storm cloud that swept across Wang’s face when talking about Australia and Japan was a moment that says much about the challenges facing Australia as it tries to balance its friendships in an unstable region.