The World

By Mure Dickie, Japan bureau chief

Barack Obama’s critics will no doubt see it as a metaphor. During his recent visit to Tokyo, the US president bowed so low to Japan’s Emperor Akihito that some people wondered if he had spotted a Y100 coin on the Imperial Palace’s immaculately swept porch.

In sharp contrast, Xi Jinping, Chinese vice president and Communist party heir apparent, yesterday merely granted his royal highness the merest of nods.

While Obama’s defenders told critics such as Rush Limbaugh that he was merely showing respect for local customs and – as a notably tall man – seeking to get down to the more diminutive emperor’s level. But when it comes to protocol, Xi – himself a man of impressive height – was closer to the orthodox light-dip-of-head and handshake combo recommended by experts.

Yet maybe Xi would have been better to borrow the Obama approach. Local coverage of the vice president’s visit to Japan has been dominated by controversy over the new Democratic party-led government’s decision to, er, bow to Beijing’s request for the imperial audience even though the Chinese had failed to ask for it the regulation month in advance.

The sense that Beijing was pushing for – and getting – special treatment will be seized on as ammunition by those in Japan and elsewhere who believe the new DPJ government is too keen to snuggle up to its rising neighbour, and by those that think that China is growing too willing to throw its weight around in the region.

Indeed, in a press conference at the Japan Foreign Correspondents’ Club on Monday, Tsai Ing-wen, the visiting leader of feisty Taiwan’s main opposition Democratic Progressive party, warned that Beijing’s insistence on the imperial encounter was just the latest example of its growing willingness to “flex muscles”.

Asian democracies should stand together to manage an increasingly powerful but still authoritarian regime, she said. “China has to learn to respect other people’s sovereignty (and) other people’s protocol and traditions.”