Beijing Winter Olympics: human rights resolution shows Japanese PM Fumio Kishida is 'boxed in' by China dilemma

The resolution on human rights adopted in Japan's parliament, the Diet, this week is a "symbolic" move, according to analysts, as Prime Minister Fumio Kishida attempts a multifaceted balancing act.

Not only must Kishida balance the fractious factions within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, he must take care not to offend China too deeply while at the same time reassuring the United States that Japan is a reliable partner.

That is a lot of political balls for Kishida to juggle, and dropping just one risks derailing an administration that is only a few months old.

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Adopted just days before the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, the resolution studiously avoided mentioning any nation by name, but expressed concern about the "serious human rights situation" in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. It was almost certainly a compromise between the hawkish wing of the party that would have wanted China's name attached to the declaration and the demands of centrists and the allied Komeito party, which has long championed closer ties with Beijing.

"Kishida is in a difficult position," said Toshimitsu Shigemura, a professor of politics and international relations at Tokyo's Waseda University.

"There are many in the centre of the party and in Komeito who want to have a better working relationship with China and it is widely believed that is Kishida's own position as well, but the conservative wing of the party is very strong," he said.

Kishida could not "afford to upset either side", he said, as the LDP needed the support of Komeito going into elections for the Upper House of the Diet in July but antagonising the conservative factions could see that support withdrawn, potentially a fatal blow to his administration.

Unfortunately, for Kishida - a known centrist and head of the Kochikai faction of the LDP - performing a balancing act between his own political leanings and the need to reach equilibrium with external pressures may become the most notable feature of his time as prime minister.

The Kochikai faction has produced a number of notable prime ministers and adopted moderate policies on domestic and foreign issues that proved popular with the electorate. In recent years, however, its political star has been on the wane as more conservative factions have ruled the LDP roost.

And that leaves Kishida treading warily.

Widely perceived as wanting to pursue a policy of engagement and calculated cooperation with China, unquestionably Tokyo's largest foreign policy concern, Kishida is being forced to balance the demands of more powerful factions as well as taking into consideration the opinions of the public and business leaders in an election year, to say nothing of ensuring that his administration remains in the good graces of Washington when it comes to dealing with Beijing.

There were rumours of behind-the-scenes opposition to Kishida taking over from Yoshihide Suga in October of last year, but powerful former LDP leader Shinzo Abe appeared to relent due to the belief that he would still be able to exert sufficient control over Kishida on matters of foreign policy, in particular.

That assumption suffered a blow when Kishida appointed Yoshimasa Hayashi as his foreign minister. Hayashi is also a member of the Kochikai faction and is considered a dove towards China - an image that was heightened when he quickly received an offer from Wang Yi, his Chinese counterpart, to visit Beijing.

Abe has responded by making a number of statements concerning Taiwan that were calculated to infuriate Beijing and complicate Kishida's foreign policy initiatives as they relate to China, analysts say. It now remains to be seen whether Kishida can overcome the internal LDP resistance and push his own policies forward.

"Traditionally, Kochikai has been a moderate, centrist faction within the party and focused on policy rather than being driven by ideology, like some of the more right-wing factions," said Koichi Nakano, a professor of politics at Tokyo's Sophia University.

It is also a grouping within the party that has a high proportion of former bureaucrats in its ranks, most notably from the powerful Ministry of Finance, he said, with that reflected in a broad fiscal conservatism as opposed to the policy of spending vast amounts of public money to get the economy out of trouble that others favoured, including Abe when he was in power.

Yet it is foreign policy where Abe is clearly most concerned, given his hawkish leanings and Kishida's undisguised links with China in years gone by.

In his autobiography, published in 2000, Kishida recalled a meeting while he was serving as foreign minister with Wang Yi. The exact date of the encounter is not specified, but it came at a time of troubled bilateral relations, although the two ministers dismissed their translators and spoke in Japanese.

Wang noted at the outset that Kishida was a member of Kochikai and expressed hope that, as a consequence, he would see relations with Beijing as important. Kishida was impressed by the comments and how China apparently perceived his faction.

Notably, Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke by phone with Kishida four days after he became prime minister, another endorsement of a faction that Beijing apparently hopes to build bridges with.

But is a closer relationship possible given the vast changes that China has undergone in the years since Kochikai was first formed and Beijing's increasing assertiveness in the Asia-Pacific region today?

The faction was set up in 1957 by Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda and subsequent leaders adhered to the policy of building the nation's economy and maintaining the security policy with the US. That was not at the expense of China, however, and Tokyo provided large amounts of aid and economic assistance to China after 1979.

Kiichi Miyazawa, prime minister between 1991 and 1993 and another Kochikai member, resisted international demands for economic sanctions to be imposed on Beijing in the aftermath of the crackdown in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and then arranged for Emperor Akihito to visit China in 1992.

The value the faction placed on relations with neighbouring countries and the importance of dialogue had not changed, Kishida wrote in his autobiography. Yet, at the same time, it is clear that China has taken a different path from that which Tokyo anticipated a quarter of a century ago.

Tokyo's biggest concern today is China's territorial claims against a number of its neighbours, including the disputed islands in the East China Sea that Japan controls and refers to as the Senkakus, but which Beijing claims and knows as the Diaoyu Islands.

In his 2000 book, Kishida said China was "undoubtedly" the most difficult nation with which he had to negotiate. That belief was not improved when Beijing unilaterally declared an Air Defence Identification Zone over the East China Sea in 2013.

Since Kishida became prime minister, hawks in the LDP have expressed concern that he would be "soft" on China, although he used the first telephone conversation with Xi to put forward his position on the Diaoyus/Senkakus debate as well as human rights issues in China, while he appears to have negotiated the potential pitfall of official representation at the Winter Games by sending Japanese Olympic officials rather than government representatives.

Yet he is still accused of failing to make clear a comprehensive strategy towards China in a year in which the two countries will mark the 50th anniversary of the normalisation of diplomatic relations.

"Any outreach he may have wanted to make towards China has been effectively boxed in by Abe's provocative comments on Taiwan," said Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies at the Tokyo campus of Temple University. "Any plans for engagement are now much more difficult and bilateral diplomacy looks decidedly unpromising at the moment."

And with just five months until the House of Councillors elections, Kingston believes the LDP will be focusing its efforts on promoting party unity and standing firm in the face of more Chinese moves.

There are, however, rumblings of discontent within the party that may pose a greater threat to Kishida and Kochikai, Nakano said.

Currently the fifth largest of the seven main factions within the LDP, there are suggestions that Kishida is attempting to shore up his support by amalgamating with a number of smaller groups to recreate "the great Kochikai" that was so influential until rivalries emerged in the mid-1990s and it began to splinter.

Sensing that he is making a play for greater control, there are reports that former prime minister Suga - very possibly at the behest of Abe - is also looking to bring together some of the same smaller factions and unaffiliated members of the party. Members of the Nikai and Moriyama factions are apparently being targeted in a bid to form the second-largest faction in the party, and one that would be broadly allied with Abe and resistant to Kishida's ambitions.

Yet all the shenanigans within Japanese politics are of less importance when it comes to the question of China than decisions that are being made by President Joe Biden, said Nakano.

"When it comes to Japanese foreign policy, decisions are more or less decided by Sino-US dynamics," he said. "It is possible that if tensions between the US and China continue to rise and Beijing refuses to back down but the US wants to avoid confrontation, then Japan might be in a very good position to act as the mediator between the two sides to avoid further aggravation.

"In that way, Kishida's administration might actually be able to improve ties between Beijing and Washington," he said.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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