China’s ‘Iron Lady’ meets her match on Japan

BEIJING - Chinese vice premier Wu Yi proved herself China's top troubleshooter after defusing a looming trade war with Washington in the mid-1990s and handling a Sars outbreak in 2003, but she met her match trying to mend fences with Japan.

The woman state media dubbed China's "Iron Lady" called off a meeting with Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi on Monday and left Japan a day early, dashing hopes that frayed ties could be healed after violent anti-Japanese protests in China in April.

Beijing has been angered by Japan's failure to face up to wartime atrocities in China and by Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni shrine, where convicted war criminals are honoured along with Japan's 2.5 million war dead.

The official Chinese line for Wu's abrupt departure was that she had "sudden internal" commitments, but she went ahead with a visit to Mongolia on Tuesday in what was seen as a diplomatic snub which angered Japan.

"It wasn't her decision. She was merely taking orders from Beijing," said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at People's University in Beijing.

"It won't have any impact on her ... On the contrary, people on the Net have praised her for being tough with Japan."

Wu, 66, China's most senior woman politician who sits on the Communist Party's elite 24-member Politburo, has earned a reputation as a hard-nosed, no-nonsense operator who puts work above all else, including her personal life. She has never married.

Wu is viewed as perhaps the most competent political problem-solver in the Chinese leadership, which came under fire in 2003 for the secretive early handling of the Sars epidemic after it erupted in the southern province of Guangdong.

She was appointed commander-in-chief of a Sars control and prevention headquarters after the health minister and the Beijing mayor were sacked for covering up the outbreak. China later came clean on the epidemic, winning praise worldwide.

Former premier Zhu Rongji appointed Wu to co-ordinate China's adoption of the conditions under which the world's most populous nation joined the World Trade Organisation in December 2001.

As a state councillor from 1998 to 2002, a post one rung down from vice premier, Wu handled the sensitive issues of state-owned industry reform, widespread violations of intellectual property rights and development of China's backward hinterland.

She has managed criminal crises, too. Wu is said to have handled a major case of smuggling in the southeastern coastal city of Xiamen, which the government alleges was masterminded by the country's most wanted fugitive, in the late 1990s.

She also brought China and the United States back from the brink of a trade war in the mid 1990s.

For some, Wu may have come under pressure from hawks in the Chinese government not to yield to Japan over the shrine issue.

"The Chinese government can't agree internally on a policy (towards Japan) ... There isn't a consensus. It's a leadership problem," said Tomoyuki Kojima of Keio University in Tokyo.

Chinese have also been angered by Tokyo's approval of a school textbook that critics say whitewashes Japan's World War 2 atrocities and by its bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

Chinese assistant foreign minister Shen Guofang told Reuters on Tuesday the two Asian giants could be reconciled if Japanese leaders stopped visiting the Yasukuni shrine.

Koizumi has defended his pilgrimages to the shrine saying they are to pray for peace. He last visited in January 2004 and said last week he would make an "appropriate decision" on when to go again.

Chinese analysts said Wu was forced to cut short her visit to avoid loss of face after Japan refused to make concessions.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan, asked on Tuesday why Wu went on to Mongolia when she had commitments in Beijing, said: "Wu did land at Beijing yesterday and left for Mongolia today ... Wu Yi's visit is such an important one. How could she not go?"

- REUTERS