JAPAN/CHINA: Warming Ties

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis by Mutsuko Murakami

TOKYO, May 19 2008 (IPS) - When China accepted Japan’s offer of expert teams to help with emergency relief, following last week’s devastating earthquake, it may have had more to do with improving ties between the Asian neighbours than with Japan’s expertise in handling such disasters.

Beijing did not immediately respond to Tokyo’s offer, but on Thursday Japan became the first country from which offers of rescue teams was accepted by China which has a history of refusing such assistance.

And not a little of this unexpected opening up had to do with Chinese President Hu Jintao’s ‘historic’ visit to Japan that preceded the Monday earthquake by days.

“We are finally coming out of a ten-year period of anti-Japanese and anti-Chinese relations,” said Prof. Bill Steele, an American historian who teaches at the International Christian University in Tokyo.

Steele noted that Japan and China have experienced several ups and downs in their relations through history. “I can only hope that it (the present goodwill) continues and again much will depend on government’s policy – how the history issues are dealt with.”

Benchmarked against the last time a Chinese president visited this country, the Hu visit was hugely successful. Ten years ago, Jiang Zemin, on a presidential visit, chose to lecture Japan publicly on its wartime record setting off years of acrimony between the two powerful Asian neighbours.

“I feel his (Hu’s) commitment to promote friendly relationship with Japan is unlike that of Jiang Zemin,’’ Asako Katsura, a university student in Tokyo told IPS. ‘’No one can imagine that his predecessor (Jiang Zemin) would have taken off his jacket and glasses and played pingpong in public. He apparently attempted to appeal with friendliness to the Japanese people,’’ she said.

But Katsura, who recently visited Nanjing for volunteer work, said she was disconcerted by the Internet blackout and Chinese media’s controlled report on the situation in Tibet. ‘’From morning to night, state TV criticised violence by Tibetans and praised appropriate actions by the Chinese military,’’ she said.

One person who admits that there is a long way to go before true reconciliation can be achieved between the two countries is Yasushi Kudo, founding director of The Tokyo-based NPO Genron, a group devoted to promoting debates on press freedom in North-east Asia and organises Japan-China symposiums for direct dialogue between journalists and intellectuals of both countries. ‘’We need to know that Japan and China share the same communication structure each promoting emotional confrontation,’’ he told IPS.

While Hu avoided controversies from the past he subtly mentioned the need of include in a joint statement released on Thursday a clause that the “two sides resolve to face history squarely”.

Frosty relations – after Jiang Zemin visited Japan in 1998 and grumpily brought up Japan’s wartime aggression -lasted through former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi’s term in office (2001-2006).

Visibly the tide only after Fukuda took office in 2007 and visited China early this year. Chinese leaders received him with enthusiastically and made amicable agreements on scientific cooperation on climate change and joint development of nuclear energy. China soon dispatched to Tokyo its State Council leader Tang Jiaxuan in February and Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi followed in early April to pave the way for the President’s visit.

During the five-day visit, Hu visited Japan’s Emperor Akihito and his family at the imperial palace and played table tennis with Chinese and Japanese star players before TV cameras. Reacting to news of panda dying of old age in a Tokyo zoo he quickly offered to loan Japan a pair of giant pandas.

Toward the end of the visit Hu visited historic districts in the ancient city of Nara in western Japan in an apparent reminder of historical cultural exchanges between the two countries. He also kept smilingly referring to possibilities for future cooperation.

“As neighbors, and as countries with enormous influence on Asia and the world, China and Japan have no alternative but to walk the road of peace, friendship and cooperation,” Hu said at a joint press conference after the Wednesday meeting. “We stand at a new starting point; we have a new opportunity to develop new relations.”

The two governments also agreed to promote “people-to-people and cultural exchanges” and cooperate in producing an effective post-2012 international framework on climate change. “They (Japan and China) confirmed that neither of them will become a threat to the other and they both emphasised the initiative for peace,” the Asahi Shimbun newspaper’s columnist Yoshibumi Wakamiya wrote. “It is pleasing to see it as a joint message of Japan and China for the 21st century.”

But, the two-nation summit produced little concrete achievements on bilaterally controversial issues. Then there was the issue of dumplings exported by China to Japan that turned out to have been poisoned and caused hundreds of consumers to fall ill.

“The two leading Asian nations were expected to talk out and move into the right direction on such issues of dumpling poisoning or of the oil fields,” said Akiko Domoto, governor of Chiba prefecture where two families were severely affted by the dumplings. “We should not have these issues glossed over by the present of pandas.”

And behind the waves of welcome flags for Hu on Tokyo streets, protests at China’s crackdown of Tibet were very audible. A couple of hundred pro-Dalai Lama demonstrators shouted “Free Tibet” at the Waseda University campus, and skirmished with security police, as Hu arrived to address students.

One week before Hu’s visit, the Olympic torch relay, conducted under tight security in Nagano, saw hundreds of Chinese students turning up to defend the torch against pro-Tibet protesters.

Fukuda referred to the Tibet crackdown during his talks with Hu, but ended up praising China’s decision to start a dialogue with Dalai Lama and encouraging the reconciliation efforts.

“The Japanese people are dissatisfied by the premier’s timid diplomacy,” said one member of LDP’s conservative group. “He will continue to lose support because of that.”

“We are concerned about Fukuda’s rather weak political base,” says Japanese historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta, who specialises in Sino-Japan relations. But he welcomed the future-oriented bilateral relationship that has developed since Fukuda visited China five months ago.