Abe shows his mettle in trade diplomacy
ABENOMICS: Tokyo is bolstering economic diplomacy to revitalise the Japanese economy
IT has been extraordinarily hectic for Japanese diplomats for the past few months. Tokyo has hosted almost back-toback visits by mainly Asian leaders lately.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has hosted and engaged with leaders from Myanmar, the Philippines, India, Singapore and Malaysia in the last few weeks alone.
Abe also wasted no time in engaging with United States presidentelect Donald Trump. Japanese newspapers yesterday front-paged a story about the upcoming Abe-Trump talks in New York, with Abe seen pushing for the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade agreement, about which Trump is having reservations.
Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi was here earlier this month and returned home with pledges of Japanese aid worth 800 billion yen over five years to support Myanmar’s peace-building and development efforts.
About 40 billion yen of the aid planned by the government and private sector will be directed towards supporting ethnic minorities in Myanmar.
The rest of the aid would be spent on areas such as airports and electricity projects, Japanese officials said.
And just a week ago, days before Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s arrival in Tokyo, India and Japan signed a pact on civil nuclear cooperation during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Tokyo visit.
This is the first pact Japan has entered with a country that is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The deal would help speed up India’s civil nuclear cooperation with the US. Though a US-based firm, Westinghouse is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Japanese firm Toshiba. Japan, the only country to have ever come under a nuclear attack, has remained wary of signing a pact with India, a non NPT country.
Writing in Hindustan Times, columnist Pramit Pal Chaudhuri said most analyses of the increasingly close relationship between India and Japan assumed it is about common concerns about China.
“Beijing’s bellicosity contributes a large slice of the bilateral pie, but the utility of the relationship to the domestic agendas of Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Shinzo Abe is the real filling,” he wrote.
Japanese diplomats said Abe’s invitations to Najib and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to visit Tokyo reflected more of Tokyo’s current emphasis on economic and trade diplomacy.
Under the Abe administration, Japan has pursued a strategic foreign policy and diplomacy that prioritise the following four key policy areas:
STRENGTHENING the Japan–US alliance;
DEEPENING cooperative relations with neighbouring countries;
STRENGTHENING economic diplomacy as a means to promoting the revitalisation of the Japanese economy; and,
FURTHER contributing to global issues.
The Abe government is bolstering economic diplomacy to help revitalise the Japanese economy.
Tokyo says in order to contribute to the realisation of the government’s growth strategy — the socalled “third arrow of Abenomics” — it is important to take in the growth of foreign countries, including that of the fast-growing emerging countries.
The increase in rail and other infrastructure spending in countries from Malaysia to India is seen as a great opportunity for Japanese industries to export their technology and add domestic jobs.
In this regard, Abe is using his charm and the “good chemistry” with Najib and Lee to pitch the Shinkansen bullet train technology for the KL-Singapore high-speed rail project.
In the words of Najib, he sensed that the “whole weight” of the Japanese government and the corporate sector was leaning towards convincing both governments to accept Shinkansen as the top choice.
The subject was raised by the Japanese side at every meeting Najib had with Abe and the business leaders here, Malaysian diplomats quipped.
Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, a known Japanophile, laid the foundations for Malaysia-Japan economic ties under his “Look East” policy. Najib has widened the policy to include China, a fast-emerging global economic player, to help modernise the Malaysian infrastructure and the economy.
As Najib said, being close to China did not mean sidelining Japan, still an economic powerhouse.
Abe too has an ambitious domestic agenda, analysts said.
“The nationalist school he comes from seeks to end Japan’s post-war pacificism,” Chaudhuri said.
“As he likes to say, he wants Japan to become a ‘normal’ country in diplomacy and defence.”