{"id":6901,"date":"2014-01-09T15:40:47","date_gmt":"2014-01-09T23:40:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=6901"},"modified":"2014-01-09T15:40:47","modified_gmt":"2014-01-09T23:40:47","slug":"is-china-copying-the-old-imperial-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/is-china-copying-the-old-imperial-japan\/","title":{"rendered":"Is China copying the old imperial Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0Tribune Media<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

In the 1920s,\u00a0Japan\u00a0began to translate its growing economic might — after a prior 50-year crash course in Western capitalism and industrialization — into formidable military power.<\/p>\n

At first, few of its possible rivals seemed to care. America and condescending European colonials did not quite believe that any Asian power could ever dare to threaten their own Pacific interests.<\/p>\n

Japan\u00a0had been a British ally and a partner of the democracies in World War I. Most of its engineering talent was trained in\u00a0Britain\u00a0and\u00a0France. The West even declared\u00a0Japan\u00a0to be one of the “Big Five” world economic powers that shared common interests in peace, prosperity and global security.<\/p>\n

Occasional parliamentary reforms had convinced many in the West that\u00a0Japan’sgrowing standard of living would eventually ensure cultural and political liberality.<\/p>\n

That was a comforting dream, given that by the 1930s Americans were disillusioned over the cost of their recent intervention in the Great War inEurope. They were weary of overseas engagement and just wanted a return to normalcy. A terrible decade-long depression at home only added to the popular American desire for isolation from the world’s problems.<\/p>\n

Americans sympathized with\u00a0China’s\u00a0security worries — but not enough to do much other than hector Japanese military governments with haughty sermons about fair play and international law, and threaten to impose crippling embargoes.<\/p>\n

Japan\u00a0ignored such sanctimoniousness. Instead, it harangued its Asian neighbors on the evils of Western colonialism and the need for them to combine under\u00a0Japan’s\u00a0own tutorship to reassert their Asian influence in world politics.<\/p>\n

The League of Nations\u00a0did nothing when\u00a0Japan\u00a0began colonizing Manchuria in 1931. Westerners seemed more impressed by the astonishing rate of Japanese economic progress and growing armed clout than they were determined to stop Japanese aggression.<\/p>\n

By 1941, few Americans were even aware that the Imperial Japanese Navy had almost magically grown more powerful than the Pacific fleet of\u00a0the United Statesin every category of battleships, carriers, cruisers, destroyers and submarines. The idea that\u00a0Japan\u00a0was waiting for an opportune moment to exploit American weakness, at a time when\u00a0Europe\u00a0was convulsed in war, would have seemed absurd to most Americans.<\/p>\n

The 1940 American relocation of its Pacific Fleet home port from\u00a0San Diego\u00a0to an exposed\u00a0Pearl Harbor\u00a0was supposed to deter\u00a0Japan. But the Japanese interpreted such muscle-flexing as empty braggadocio, if not more foolhardily symbolism.<\/p>\n

The attack on\u00a0Pearl Harbor\u00a0followed.<\/p>\n

Substitute communist\u00a0China\u00a0for imperial\u00a0Japan, and the same thing is now occurring in the Pacific.\u00a0China\u00a0believes it is finally time to make its military reflect its enormous economic power.<\/p>\n

Chinese armed forces are growing while America’s are shrinking.\u00a0China\u00a0does not like visiting American blowhards — most recently, Vice President\u00a0Joe Biden\u00a0— lecturing them on human rights, especially when American power, both military and economic, appears to be waning.<\/p>\n

If the Japanese of the 1930s once talked of Western decadence and American frivolity, so too the Chinese now sense that American global influence is not being earned by the current generation of Americans that enjoys the high life on$17 trillion\u00a0in borrowed money, much of it from\u00a0China.<\/p>\n

China\u00a0likewise senses growing American isolationism, hears parlor talk about the U.S. reducing its nuclear arsenal, and notices America’s new habit of distancing itself from allies.<\/p>\n

Americans once talked tough about\u00a0Iraq,\u00a0Iran,\u00a0Afghanistan,\u00a0Libya\u00a0and\u00a0Syria. ButChina\u00a0tuned out that empty rhetoric and instead noted that we abandoned\u00a0Iraqafter the successful surge, are exhausted by\u00a0Afghanistan, were humiliated byBashar Assad\u00a0in\u00a0Syria, and were seemingly paid back with Benghazi after removing\u00a0Muammar Gadhafi\u00a0in\u00a0Libya.\u00a0China\u00a0is reassured that what America says and what America does are not quite the same things.<\/p>\n

More importantly, the Chinese also appear to hate the Japanese in the same way the latter apparently despised the former in the 1930s.\u00a0China\u00a0resentsJapan’s\u00a0undeniable lack of contrition over the approximately 15 million Chinese killed by Japanese aggression in World War II. The Chinese also sense thatJapan\u00a0may be a has-been power, with an aging, shrinking population; energy woes; a sluggish, deflationary economy; and increasingly without its once ubiquitous American patron at its side.<\/p>\n

China\u00a0accepts that the U.N., like the old\u00a0League of Nations, is useless in solving global tensions, and prefers that it is so.<\/p>\n

Add everything up and\u00a0China\u00a0seems about as confident of the future as\u00a0Japanonce was in the 1930s. It is as eager to teach\u00a0Japan\u00a0a lesson, as\u00a0Japan\u00a0once did\u00a0China.<\/p>\n

America once again appears confused by these radical changes in the Pacific. That is, until someone in the region tries something stupid — once again.<\/p>\n

(Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0is a classicist and historian at the\u00a0Hoover Institution,Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of “The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern” You can reach him by e-mailingauthor@victorhanson.com<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\n(C) 2014 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0Tribune Media\u00a0 In the 1920s,\u00a0Japan\u00a0began to translate its growing economic might — after a prior 50-year crash course in Western capitalism and industrialization — into formidable military power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[275],"tags":[1063,1028,231,21,539,365,112,1068],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1Nj","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10753,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/chinas-new-greater-east-asia-co-prosperity-sphere\/","url_meta":{"origin":6901,"position":0},"title":"China\u2019s New Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 27, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review \u00a0 China is following the same path to regional hegemony that Japan did in the 1930s. \u00a0 A few weeks ago, Chinese president Xi Jinping offered a Soviet-style five-year plan for China\u2019s progress at the Communist Party congress in Beijing. Despite his talk of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The West"","block_context":{"text":"The West","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-west\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10414,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-korean-games-of-thrones\/","url_meta":{"origin":6901,"position":1},"title":"The Korean Games of Thrones","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 25, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review \u00a0 The time for pious American lectures is over. \u00a0 North Korea North Korea seeks respect on the cheap \u2014 and attention and cash \u2014 that it cannot win the old-fashioned way by the long, hard work of achieving a dynamic economy or an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "South Korea"","block_context":{"text":"South Korea","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/south-korea\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4118,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-american-21st-century\/","url_meta":{"origin":6901,"position":2},"title":"The American 21st Century","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 2, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The current debt, recession, wars, and political infighting have depressed Americans into thinking their country soon will be overtaken by more vigorous rivals abroad. Yet this is an American fear as old as it is improbable. In the 1930s, the Great Depression supposedly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "America's Future"","block_context":{"text":"America's Future","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/americas-future\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":980,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-post-american-world\/","url_meta":{"origin":6901,"position":3},"title":"A Post-American World?","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 10, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online In a scathing denunciation of Mitt Romney last week, Fareed Zakaria praised Barack Obama for his nuanced understanding of what Zakaria has called the \u201cPost-American World\u201d: This is a new world, very different from the America-centric one we got used to over the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "America's Future"","block_context":{"text":"America's Future","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/americas-future\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10573,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/throwing-away-the-russian-card\/","url_meta":{"origin":6901,"position":4},"title":"Throwing Away the Russian Card","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 13, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson National Review The love-hate relation with Putin, from the Obama-era red reset button to the current collusion hysteria, has been a disaster. \u201cThey [the North Koreans] will eat grass but will not stop their program as long as they do not feel safe.\u201d\u2014 Vladimir Putin, Beijing,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Putin"","block_context":{"text":"Putin","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/putin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11180,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/america-the-weird\/","url_meta":{"origin":6901,"position":5},"title":"America The Weird","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 9, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Hoover Institution On first glance, America does not seem that exceptional. Like China and Russia, it is a superpower. And, also like those countries, it is huge territorially. It shares many affinities with Europe. And, like China, Japan and Germany, the United States is an economic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "USA"","block_context":{"text":"USA","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/usa\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6901"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6901"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6902,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6901\/revisions\/6902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}