Speech
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
On the acceptance of the Honorary Doctorate conferred by Waseda University

[Delivered in Tokyo, Japan, November 18, 1997]

Japan and East Asia
in the new century

ON BEHALF OF my Government and the Filipino people, I accept this honorary degree as a recognition by this great university of the economic and social reforms that have so changed the face of the Philippines and the fortunes of our people over these past five and a half years.

This conferment affirms the affinity between Waseda and the Philippines and is fitting and timely, because Waseda itself is a product of Japan’s great reform movement—the Meiji Restoration. Its founder (in 1882) was the statesman Okuma Shigenobu—one of the second generation of the remarkable young samurai who led this country out of feudalism and into the modern era.

As one of the four great universities of Japan, Waseda is the oldest and most prestigious of Japan’s private universities—a center of excellence in political science, an icon of Tokyo’s intellectual life—and the alma mater of many of Japan’s finest politicians, journalists and intellectuals.

Thus Waseda has a seminal role in shaping Japan’s role in East Asia. It is this role that I wish to examine with you—focusing on East Asia’s expectations of Japan at the beginning of a new century—and a new millennium.

Japan has long been a powerful presence in East Asia. As the first Asian state to achieve great-power status, it was widely admired by East Asia’s colonial peoples.

In fact, the Filipino revolutionaries against Spain in 1896 actively sought Japan’s military and moral support. (A ship from Japan—whose cargo of guns and ammunition might have changed the outcome of the Filipino-Spanish conflict—sank in a storm off Northern Luzon.) Some of our revolutionary heroes found refuge in this country from political persecution at home—just as did the Chinese revolutionary leader, Sun Yat-sen. Our own national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal, spent time in Japan during his period of enlightenment.

A powerful presence in East Asia

In French Indochina, Vietnamese students celebrated Japan’s victory over Tsarist Russia in 1905. And Japan’s thrust southward during tire Pacific War set off the great wave of decolonization that ended the era of western imperialism.

In the postwar period, Japan’s amazing recovery from the disasters of war—and its swift ascent to economic power status—made it an appealing model—on which South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia all deliberately patterned their own development programs.

In more recent years Japan has become East Asia’s largest trading partner, its biggest foreign investor and its largest giver of official development assistance.

Today—like the whole of East Asia—Japan is at a time of transition to new political, economic and even cultural forms.

Next month in Kuala Lumpur, the nine heads of government of ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) will meet with the three heads of government of Japan, China and the Republic of Korea in what will be the first of yearly East Asian leaders’ summits.

These informal, personal, yet productive meetings affirm our mutual recognition of East Asia’s increasing interdependence—our mutual recognition that the force of arms—which had for so long arbitrated the relationships between nations—is giving way to a more benign regime of mutual benefit.

A more open Japan

Here in Japan, the reforms that the government of Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto has begun should produce a more open, a more competitive and a more democratic national society.

Together with the larger regional role that this country now seems willing to take, these reforms should enhance Japan’s role in all three aspects of East Asia’s collective life: its role in East Asian security—in East Asian development—and in realizing the vision we share of an Asia-Pacific community.

Let me begin with a survey of Japan’s role in the security of East Asia.

Most modem states have come to define their security in terms larger than military. Strategic frameworks more and more include economic, political and social factors as well.

Today the globe that the foreign policymaker must contemplate is less and less a world of “sea-lanes” and “chokepoints.” Military power is less and less necessary to acquire foreign markets or protect raw-material sources.

Indeed, for the richest countries of the globe—the mature democracies of western Europe and North America—war has become obsolete as an instrument of their geopolitical competition.

Even here in East Asia, the vigorous growth of our economies and the liberalization of our policies enable us to hope the time will soon come when our mutual security will depend no longer on arms and alliances but on peaceful commerce and integration into one interdependent East Asian community.

A broader and deeper partnership

The call that Premier Hashimoto made, in Singapore last January, for a “broader and deeper” partnership between ASEAN and Japan—the proposal which became the seed-concept of December’s first Asian Summit—fits into the context of this larger definition of national security to which most of our countries now subscribe.

Premier Hashimoto’s proposal reaffirms Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda’s doctrine of “heart-to-heart” diplomacy of 1977—during which he renounced a military role for Japan while also spelling out its integrating and economically stabilizing role in Southeast Asia.

Like its neighbors in ASEAN, the Philippines wants to see today’s Japan integrated fully into the world community. Within the context of structural reforms in the United Nations system, the Ramos Government supports Japan’s candidacy for a permanent seat in the Security Council.

We are confident that Japan will exercise its global political role on the side of peace—which Japan needs more than any other great power—because of its worldwide trade and investments, its scarcity of natural resources and its extreme vulnerability to nuclear conflict.

Both ASEAN and Japan benefit from multilateralism

On the concept of managing regional conflicts of interest through a broad and sustainable consensus among the past Asian states, my Government regards the interests of ASEAN and Japan as converging and mutually beneficial.

ASEAN’s strategic framework calls for balancing its security, economic and technological relations with all the great powers. For Japan, the same kind of multilateralism gives it the framework within which to articulate its new policies without appearing to be either overbearing or insensitive to its neighbors.

In a word, multilateralism gives Japan the framework for dealing with East Asia’s historical fears of an overly assertive Japan.

Premier Hashimoto proposes a two-track approach to East Asian security. The first is to promote “subregional cooperation to settle disputes and conflicts.” The second is to promote “regionwide political dialogue to enhance a sense of mutual reassurance.”

These proposals conform substantially with ASEAN’s own approach to regional stability.

ASEAN integration has not only sublimated various subregional conflicts. ASEAN unification also safeguards Southeast Asia from the interventionism of outside powers, and unification has given ASEAN the self-confidence to take the initiative in regional peacekeeping. Thus its ASEAN Regional Forum has become the Asia-Pacific venue for political dialogue and mutual reassurance.

Alliance backs East Asia’s stability

The Asia-Pacific’s greatest security concern is how Japan, China and the United States arrange their triangular relationship.

We of the Philippines can understand how much-debated the new guidelines to the U.S.-Japan mutual defense treaty must be in this country—and among you, the young people here at Waseda. But I would say they are generally welcomed in ASEAN—where the U.S.-Japan alliance is seen as underpinning and reinforcing East Asian stability.

These new defense guidelines give Japan the opportunity to rise above its Cold War alliance with the U.S. for it corrects the inherent anomaly in a country of Japan’s economic power and political nationalism merely remaining as a strategic client of the United States. Now, Japan can play a less passive role in dealing with conflict stations in East Asia—while also enabling the United Steles to count on a regional ally that would share with it the costs of maintaining peace in the region.

Until our individual countries have gained enough mutual trust to organize themselves into a viable cooperative security system, regional peace will have to depend on a balance of power. Yet—without the American presence—no combination of regional powers can provide a credible counterweight to a resurgent China.

Security intellectuals have pointed out that an East Asian balance-of-power system without the United States would demand a much higher level of military capability—including nuclear arms—for Japan as well as for other East Asian powers. In this sense, the U.S.-Japan alliance assures East Asia—including China—that Japan will not need to rearm independently.

Japan and East Asian development

Let me now turn to Japan’s role in East Asian development.

I have noted Japan’s decisive influence on the East Asian model of development—and its impact on the individual East Asian economies. For instance, Japan is the Philippines’ most important partner in development cooperation—and its second largest partner, foreign investor and source of tourists.

Already Asia has become Japan’s biggest export market. The continent as a whole buys from Japan a third more than it does from the United States, and more than twice what the European community buys from Japan.

Since April 1996 Japan’s total trade with Asia has been surpassing Japan’s trade with the United States and the European Union combined.

As one may expect, however, aspects of this economic relationship need a great deal of improvement. One problem is that of indigenizing—or simply stated, increasing the “local content” of—the management of Japanese industries that have relocated to East Asia as a consequence of the rising yen.

One estimate is the 13 percent of all Japanese manufacturing will be done outside Japan by the year 2001—much of it in Asia. Yet Japanese industries relocating to East Asia hire fewer local managers than their American and European counterparts do. They also apparently resist more liberal technology transfer.

On a more general level, Japan’s East Asian trading partners complain about the difficulties of access to Japan’s home markets. Japan’s recent protracted recession—by contracting its imports—have also hurt its East Asian trading partners. But some of these problems should be eased by the financial and economic reforms the Hashimoto government is putting in place.

The uses of official development assistance

Japan’s political uses of official development assistance (ODA)—the bulk of which goes to East Asia—is widely praised because it contrasts so sharply with its use in earlier times-which was then primarily to secure East Asian markets for Japanese industries.

Political conditionalities attached to ODA grants are now used to nurture the market system—to promote human rights, to enhance civil liberties and to upgrade the skills of ordinary people—and to promote environmental conservation in recipient countries. In China—the biggest recipient of ODA (it received almost 800 million yen over the last five years)—Japan has been using its aid program to discourage the testing of nuclear weapons.

How is the all-important triangular relationship between Japan, China and the United States likely to develop over these next 10-15 years?

On its outcome—in my view—will hinge our ability to replace our security arrangements based on the military balance with a new form of mutual security based on beneficial economic interdependence and social cooperation. On its outcome will hinge our collective ability to realize the vision all our peoples share—of a peaceful, free and prosperous Asia-Pacific community.

Leader of the ‘flying geese’

I believe the future of the Japan-China-U.S. relationship will depend on how key regional problems are resolved.

One positive influence would be a gradualist unification of the separated half-nations on the Korean Peninsula.

Equally important would be a mutually agreed-on resolution of the problem of China and Taiwan—a resolution inextricably linked with the progress of creeping democratization in China.

Still another key factor in the triangular relationship would be the effectiveness of a multilateral regional framework such as the ASEAN Regional Forum and APEC, which is our Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum.

In all of these future scenarios, Japan is intimately involved. On the Korean Peninsula, in fact, its potential influence may be stronger than even that of the United States. Japan is also a leading member of both the ASEAN Regional Forum and APEC.

In economic terms, Japan is the powerhouse of East Asia. It is the leader of the region’s “flying geese” pattern of development. But, in recent years, Japan’s wings have begun to falter.

If Japan is to live up to East Asia’s expectations, it must show it can restructure its corporatist economic culture to a more flexible pattern of comparative advantage that is more decentralized and encourages more and more individual intelligence, innovation and creativity. This is an imperative that all players, big or small, cannot escape in our modernizing and globalizing world community.

Suiting our societies to the new century

Now let me sum up and conclude.

Our forebears—the Meiji-era modernizers of Japan and the Filipino revolutionaries who proclaimed colonial Asia’s first free republic in 1898—created our respective nations with an enlightened vision for the 20th century. Today, it is both your duty and mine to chart the restructuring of our national societies—to suit them to the imperatives of the 21st century.

In the Philippines today, we are engaged in a steady process of political, economic, social and cultural reform, whose depth and scope can be equated with the epochal transformations of the Meiji Restoration.

In this country, the reforms being made to reinvigorate the economy and increase the accountability of public officials should result in a Japan that is more vibrant, more confident, more outward-looking and more open.

Over the long span of Asian history, Japan has been—for most East Asians—the nearest foreign country. China and India have been strong and familiar influences for centuries. But, in my opinion, Japan’s cultural imprint on the region has so far been marginal.

Japan now, more than ever before, has the historic chance to help shape the future of our Asia-Pacific region.

It would be misleading to believe that East Asia has rid itself completely of the historical animosities and bitter memories of the Pacific War. But I myself think that what is needed is not so much a formal apology from Japan as an open and frank examination of our shared history, and to carry on from there toward the building of a truly East Asian community.

And I see good portents in the increasing interaction between East Asia and individual young Japanese—students like you touring the region on vacation; or young executives on Asian assignments—who collectively make up the appealing new face of Japan.

I also regard as a positive sign the increasing openness of Japanese internal politics and of Japanese ways of trying to deal with problems at home. It gives us glimpses of a more caring—and by that token a more open—Japan. With this new, less aloof Japan we can identify more easily.

Building bridges of interdependence

In the new century dawning on us, the Asia-Pacific region’s continuing capacity to prosper will depend on its ability to sustain economic cooperation, mutual trust and—most important—regional peace.

The 21st century will require steadfastness and determination from the next generation who will lead us.

And, obviously in this country, a fair proportion of those emerging Asia-Pacific leaders will come from Waseda University.

The period ahead must be one of transpacific interdependence—or every nation in the region may fall short of what it can become, or what we, on both sides of the Pacific can all become.

You of the younger generation must begin building bridges of interdependence with all those peoples who share this great ocean with us.

Only by linking the two shores of the Pacific into a realm of peace, freedom and progress can we create for ourselves and for those who will come after us an enduring true Asia-Pacific community.