TOKYO - FEARING China's growing influence in Asia, Japan is hesitating to cut off aid to Myanmar, whose bloody crackdown on protests has put Tokyo in an awkward position, officials and analysts say.

Junta troops shot dead a Japanese journalist covering protests on Sept 27 as authorities clamped down on the largest pro-democracy demonstrations in Yangon in nearly two decades.

Japan threatened to curtail aid or take other punitive action. But despite calls from its Western allies for a united global response on Myanmar, it has yet to announce any action.

Looming in the background is China, which is Myanmar's biggest supporter and which has refused to suspend aid to the junta in response to the crisis.

'Cutting aid to Myanmar is easy, but the junta would not be troubled by that because of the presence of China,' senior foreign ministry official Reiichiro Takahashi said.

'I personally think cutting the current grant aid to Myanmar would only hurt ordinary people's lives,' he said.

'But we don't want to look to China for their help in pressuring the junta, because that would help increase China's political clout in the region.' China has shown growing influence in the region, proposing a different framework from Japan for a future East Asian community.

Humanitarian aid
Japan, in a rare break with the United States and the European Union, provides humanitarian aid to Myanmar and remains one of its largest donors.

But, unlike China, Tokyo has made a stand against the actions of the Myanmar regime, suspending low-interest loans for infrastructure projects since 2003 to protest the detention of Nobel laureate and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Japan, whose relations with its close neighbours remain uneasy due to wartime history, has long focused its diplomacy on building close ties with Southeast Asia.

Asian countries' sentiments towards the country have gradually improved over the past few decades and Tokyo has worked in recent months to ease friction with China and South Korea over the past.

But despite these steps forward, analysts say that insisting on democracy in Myanmar would be tricky for Japan due to its own past militarism in the nation formerly known as Burma.

Myanmar, which frequently denounces Britain for its own past imperialism in the country, has largely stayed mum on history issues with Tokyo.

An exception came last year when Myanmar lashed out at Japan over its past aggression after Tokyo switched sides and voted to haul Myanmar before the UN Security Council over its human rights record.

Double standard
'Value-based diplomacy can be quickly criticised as a double standard if the country's own moral performance is not consistently high,' said Takashi Shiraishi, a professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.

'If Japan cannot sincerely tackle the issue of its wartime history, it had better refrain from taking an overbearing attitude towards Asian countries,' Shiraishi said.

'If Japan stresses human rights issues too much, it would destroy the relations with China,' said Hidekazu Wakatsuki, associate professor at the Hokkai Gakuen University.

Business groups have pressed Japan not to irritate China, which in the last fiscal year became Japan's largest trading partner for the first time since World War II, unseating the United States.

Energy analyst Akio Shibata warned that Japan, which is almost entirely dependent on imports for its oil and gas, would lose badly needed resources in Myanmar if it joined Western sanctions.

'China, India and South Korea have already invested in Myanmar for oil and gas resources, and Japan could be left out from the race for resources,' he said. -- AFP