Historians and columnists have made comparisons between Britain and a rising Germany in 1914 and the current tensions between Japan and China; a hot topic at the start of the centenary year of World War I.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, in his appearance Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, raised the bar when he agreed with the thesis, saying that he saw a “similar situation” between now and then.
During a discussion with journalists, Mr. Abe said that the strong trade relations between Germany and Britain in 1914 were not unlike the economic interdependence today between Japan and China.
In 1914, economic self-interest failed to put a brake on the strategic rivalry that led to the outbreak of war, Mr. Abe said. He criticized the annual double-digit growth in China’s defense budget, calling it a source of instability in the Pacific region, an implicit comparison to Germany’s rapid build-up of arms before World War I.
Senior Chinese officials, who sometimes show up at Davos in a great phalanx, were not present at the conference this year – perhaps because Mr. Abe was a prominent guest.
So the first opportunity for a reply from China came on Thursday at the regular news briefing at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing.
The Ministry’s chief spokesman, Qin Gang, was well prepared, having plenty of practice with outrage since Mr. Abe visited the Yasukuni Shrine in December. Japanese war dead are honored at the shrine, including war criminals convicted after World War II.
Mr. Qin began by suggesting that the comparison between Germany and China was unconvincing because Germany was a novice power in 1914, compared to China today.
“Actually, China has long since been a great power in history,” Mr. Qin said. “By the Han and Tang dynasties, China was already a major global power. So there’s no such thing as the so-called problem that China is rising to become a world power.”
Mr. Qin was referring to the golden ages of ancient rulers when technological advances and cultural achievements put China ahead of the world.
From this perspective, China was just regaining lost ground, he said. “Right now, we are committed to the process of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
Just as Mr. Abe in Davos said that Japan was committed to peace, so Mr. Qin said China was “resolutely sticking to the path of peaceful development.” But Mr. Abe also added that an “inadvertent” conflict – something that the United States worries could be provoked by a collision of ships in the East China Sea or by planes in the airspace over disputed islands there – would spell disaster.
In the last several months, China has refused to consider overtures by Mr. Abe for a summit meeting with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping.
Mr. Qin restated that position Thursday. “Japan’s leaders have closed the door on dialogue between the two leaders,” he said.
Then he recited the familiar litany of China’s version of 19th- and 20th-century history, saying of Japan: “Rather than using pre-World War I Anglo-German relations, why don’t you deeply examine your mistakes during the First Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula and the fascist war that Japan launched on victim countries in World War II?”