A protester at an anti-Japan rally in Shanghai. (Reuters)

Beijing, April 19: Behind the spiralling row between China and Japan that both blame on the past, lies a complex game of geopolitics being played with an eye to the future.

The ferocious anti-Japanese protests that erupted here three weeks ago were initially blamed on the sudden confluence of four controversial issues:

• The new textbooks in Japan that gloss over its World War II atrocities,

• An oil-driven territorial dispute in the Senkaku islands,

• Japan?s re-statement of military support for Taiwan, and

• Tokyo?s bid for membership in the UN Security Council.

?The coming together of all this invoked anti-Japanese feelings that are well rooted in Chinese society?, said Jin Linbo, director of Asia-Pacific Studies at the China Institute of International Studies in Beijing.

But Jing Huang, a senior fellow at the foreign policy studies programme at the Brookings Institute in Washington DC said: ?The root of the problem is that Japan has been trying in recent years to ?normalise? its statehood and play a greater role in international affairs and China is now trying to diminish Japan?s role in the world?.

Since the mid-1990s, Right-wing Japanese politicians, such as current Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, have been trying to shake off Japan?s post-war guilt and acquire greater political influence in the world. With a resurgent China also looking to increase its status in Asia and the world, the two nations have been on a collision course.

Steeling attitudes on both sides is a chauvinistic nationalism that is being fanned in by those in power in both countries, albeit for different reasons and in different ways.

?In Japan, after ten years of stagnation, there is a fear that the country has peaked?, Jing said. ?Many Japanese feel threatened and try to make up for this loss in confidence with excessive militaristic thinking?.

In China, a Communist Party ?lacking in legitimacy because of the mistakes made during the Cultural Revolution and reform process is propping itself up using nationalist credentials?, said Wang Jianwei, chair of the political science department at the University of Wisconsin.

For Japan, which only apologised in 1995 for the brutal behaviour of its troops in the years just before and during World War II, the current fracas is drawing attention to what many Asian nations such as South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines have always considered a belated and half-hearted acknowledgement of their feelings.

The fallout could seriously affect Japan?s chances of being voted into the UN Security Council, and once again raise the issue of reparations that could cost Tokyo billions.

In China, the government?s tacit support for the student protests ?could come back to create even bigger problems? for it domestically, said Jin.

In a society full of pent-up frustrations ?whenever there is an outpouring of passions on the streets the government should be worried about where it will lead,? said Alan Wachman, associate professor of international studies at Tufts University.

?The (Tiananmen) protests of spring 1989 did not emerge for the purposes they eventually came to represent and one could see how a protest aimed at expressing irritation to Japan can spill over into other areas or be seen as licence to protest by other groups.?

Already, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao?s March statement at China?s National People?s Congress, the country?s rubber-stamp parliament, that Japan must not be accepted as an equal member of the global community until it ?faces up to history? is taking the Communist Party towards some thin ice.

?It is quite difficult for China?s leadership to recognise that China also has to reflect on its history? both domestically, where the Maoist years resulted in over 30 million deaths, and overseas in places such as Cambodia where Maoist China supported the Khmer Rouge as it killed about 1.7 million people, Jin said.