Sino-Japanese Relations

DOI10.1177/002070200906400119
AuthorLinus Hagström
Published date01 March 2009
Date01 March 2009
Subject MatterOver the Transom
IJ Layout Linus Hagström
Sino-Japanese
relations
The ice that won’t melt
The 2008 commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the peace and
friendship treaty between Japan and the People’s Republic of China
coincided with much optimism about the healthy development and
prosperous future of this bilateral relationship. Observers around the globe
are welcoming the end to the frosty relations that existed under former
Japanese Prime Minister Jun’ichiro Koizumi (2001–06), while news articles
and reports tend to reproduce the official line that the “ice” between the
countries has been “breaking” and “melting,” and that the relationship is
now experiencing a period of “spring.”
The recent signs of détente in Sino-Japanese relations should indeed be
welcomed, but this should not amount to turning a blind eye to the
substantial problems that remain unsolved—problems that could, moreover,
be repoliticized by nationalist forces in both countries. Continuing with the
Linus Hagström is senior research fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs,
and research fellow at the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities. He
wishes to thank Johan Lagerkvist for being a sounding board for many of the ideas developed
in this article, and the many interviewees who shared their views and expertise generously.
A grant from the Swedish Research Council made this research possible.

| International Journal | Winter 2008-09 | 223 |

| Linus Hagström |
officially sanctioned ice metaphor, one could argue that the present breaking
and melting are only occurring at the tip of the iceberg, most of which is
yethidden under water. It is still highly uncertain that the current spring will
be succeeded by summer; the risk of a sudden relapse to what may be likened
to autumn, or perhaps even winter, is considerable.
Based mostly on recent interviews with Japanese decision-makers and
academics, this article aims to unsettle the idea that Sino-Japanese relations
are nearing stability. As one Japanese informant stated, very succinctly, “[t]he
official view of Japan’s relationship with China…is almost so good it is scary.
The leaders talk about the breaking and melting of ice but it is almost as if
they are throwing hot water on the ice. The gap between the earlier tension
and present positive statements is all too big.”1
A SINO-JAPANESE “COLD WAR”
With Koizumi’s ascent to power in April 2001, mistrust and mutual
apprehension on both sides of the East China Sea came forcefully to the fore
and produced what some observers called a “cold war” in Sino-Japanese
relations.2 One could argue that a major underlying reason for the strained
relationship was structural changes in the 1990s: the shared enemy—the
Soviet Union—disappeared and, as Japan sank further into economic
decline, China rose as an economic powerhouse. However, most of the
Japanese interviewees quoted in this article tend to agree that it was
Koizumi’s annual pilgrimages in 2001–06 to the Yasukuni Shrine, which
honours the memory of Japanese war dead, including 14 class-A war
criminals, that led more directly to bilateral animosity in the early- and mid-
2000s.
According to China’s Vice-Foreign Minister Wu Dawei and others, the
relationship became particularly frostbitten in 2005, when it reached an
alltime low since the two countries normalized their relationship in 1972.3
1 Interview with an analyst, Japan External Trade Organization, Tokyo, 19 November
2007.
2 Simon Tisdall, “Sino-Japanese ‘cold war’ stirs new tensions,” Guardian, 18 January
2005, www.guardian.co.uk; Linus Hagström and Johan Lagerkvist, “Sino-Japanese cold
war,” Axess, January 2005, www.axess.se; and Michael Vatikiotis, “Heading off a Japan–
China conflict,” International Herald Tribune, 3 March 2005, www.iht.com.
3 Jeremy Bransten, “China: Beijing says relations with Tokyo worst in 30 years,” Radio
Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 18 April 2005, www.rferl.org.
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| Sino-Japanese relations |
Apart from Koizumi’s recurring visits to Yasukuni, the slippery slope towards
a new ice age involved, in short, ongoing disputes over economic rights in the
East China Sea, riots in Beijing after Japan beat China in the Asia Cup finals
in August 2004, the intrusion into Japanese territorial waters of a Chinese
nuclear attack submarine in November of the same year, the Japanese
identification of China as “a concern” alongside North Korea in the national
defence program guidelines of December 2004, and the alleged collection of
44 million signatures for a Chinese petition against Japan’s bid for a
permanent seat on the United Nations security council. It also involved a
US-Japan joint statement in February 2005, which could be interpreted to
include the security of Taiwan in the alliance’s affairs; and the Japanese
ministry of education’s approval in April the same year of a controversial
history textbook that was perceived to gloss over Japan’s wartime atrocities in
the 1930s and 1940s, and which provoked mass demonstrations in various
Chinese cities in the last week of March and the first weeks of April 2005. In
December 2005, then-Foreign Minister—at the time of writing in January
2009 Japanese Prime Minister—Taro Aso went so far as to call China “a
considerable threat.” This was later denied in a written statement, but Aso
repeated his assessment in April of the following year.4
Apart from official protests, popular petitions, street demonstrations,
and a Chinese boycott of Japanese commodities and damage to Japanese
property in China, tensions were expressed in the paucity of regular bilateral
summits between October 2001 and September 2006. For five consecutive
years the most senior leaders of the two countries met only on the periphery
of multilateral summit meetings. Most significantly, and very abruptly from
the point of view of her Japanese host, on 23 May 2005 Chinese Vice-Premier
Wu Yi even cancelled a meeting with Koizumi scheduled for that same day.
The expression “cold politics and hot economics” was coined to reflect the
state of the relationship in the mid-2000s.
4 Kanako Takahara, “China posing a threat: Aso,” Japan Times Online, 23 December
2005, http://search.japantimes.co.jp; Reiji Yoshida, “It’s official: China not a threat,”
Japan Times Online, 1 February 2006, http://search.japantimes.co.jp; and “Aso says
China a threat: Shrine overtures rebuffed,” Japan Times Online, 3 April 2006,
http://search.japantimes.co.jp.
| International Journal | Winter 2008-09 | 225 |

| Linus Hagström |
“ICE
BREAKING”
AND
“ICE
MELTING”:
NEW
LEADERS
AND
ECONOMIC
INTERDEPENDENCE
As Koizumi stepped down in September 2006, few observers believed that
incoming Prime Minister Shinzo Abe—a renowned nationalist with
revisionist views on history—would be able to mend fences with China.
Abe’s first trip abroad as prime minister nevertheless was to Beijing in
October 2006, after only two weeks in the post. Yet a senior Japanese
diplomat notes that at heart Abe remained highly critical of China.5 This
would explain his simultaneous emphasis on “values diplomacy” and what
appeared to be an aspiration to contain China’s rise through the creation of
an “arc of freedom and prosperity”—a quadrilateral alignment between
Japan, the United States, India, and Australia. Although the other three
parties were not so enthusiastic about this scheme, precisely out of concern
that it would be seen as containment of China, the four countries’ navies still
went ahead with an unprecedented but little publicized joint security exercise
in September 2007, known as the “quadrilateral initiative.”6
In any case, at the Sino-Japanese summit in October 2006 the two
leaders agreed to make joint efforts to build “a mutually beneficial
relationship based on common strategic interests”—an expression that has
since developed into something of a mantra, from Chinese Premier Wen
Jiabao’s visit to Japan in April 2007 onwards. Many Japanese interviewees
refer to and ascribe importance to this concept. However, former Japanese
ambassador to the UN Makoto Taniguchi cautions that the phrase was
launched precisely because current Sino-Japanese relations are not “strategic
and reciprocal.”7
Abe’s time at the helm was brief, but during the similarly short reign of
Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, all talk about “ice breaking” and “ice melting”
finally led to the proclamation of “spring” during his visit to Beijing in
December 2007. At the summit, Fukuda and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao
agreed to strengthen mutually beneficial cooperation, especially targeting
environmental degradation, energy conservation, the protection of
intellectual property rights and Japanese rice exports to China; to promote
mutual understanding through exchanges between the countries’ young
5 Interview with a senior Japanese diplomat, Tokyo, 22 November 2007.
6 Senior Indian official, talk under the Chatham House rule, Stockholm, 17 April 2008.
7 Interview with Ambassador Makoto Taniguchi, Tokyo, 12 November 2007.
| 226 | Winter 2008-09 | International Journal |

| Sino-Japanese relations |
people and intellectuals and in areas of security; and to cooperate in the
region and international society, again focusing on the pressures of climate
change, but also on the North Korean nuclear issue, cooperation with Africa,
international terrorism, and reform of the United Nations system.
When Hu Jintao visited Japan in May 2008, as the first Chinese head of
state to do so for 10 years,...

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