Watching Silently

The Japanese are silently and closely watching how things are going on in Beijing, where five people died with car explosion in the symbolic place for protests against government, Tiananmen Square. As the Government of China determines the incident to be an act of terrorism by Uighur rebels, the officials of Japanese government are focusing on how it affects bilateral relations between both nations. However, it depends on how China is going to deal with the issue.

News reports in Japan so far revealed that the car exploded at sidewalk in front of Tiananmen Gate, killing three crews and two pedestrians, and injured thirty-eight people. Public Safety Agency of the City of Beijing found that eight minority people mainly from Uighur were engaged in the incident. A human rights group in Hong Kong indicated that the explosion was a retaliation of Uighur people to the oppression of Chinese government in a riot occurred in Lukqun, Uighur, in June, in which twenty-seven were killed.

History of Uighur is full of oppression of Han people that consists dominant ethnicity in China. It was the eighth century when Uighur people established their kingdom, but conquered by the Hans in Qing Dynasty in eighteenth century. Although they declared East Turkestan Islamic Republic early in the twentieth century, Chinese government kept on governing the region. After the establishment of communist China, the government controlled resources such as petroleum or natural gas, imposed Chinese language and education, and set job opportunities preferable to Han people.

The expectation of Japan is shift of China’s concern from the foreign affairs to the domestic. The Government of China put the highest priority on maintaining their governance in Uighur, as well as Tibet and Taiwan, while they do not clearly include Senkaku in that category. Realizing that people in China are no longer blinded by assertion toward Japan, the government would concentrate its policy to settle internal frustration of the people.

Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yoshihide Suga, carefully selected his words in press conferences. “We are collecting information through diplomatic route to find out what had caused that incident,” told Suga on possibility of it being terrorism. While Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, invited criticisms on his comment of a possibility of shooting down foreign unmanned areal vehicles around Senkaku, the bilateral relationship showed a small progress with the meeting of former Prime Minister, Yasuo Fukuda, and Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi. Situation in Senkaku made no difference, anyway. After all, what Japan can do is waiting for things to calm down.