china and japan modern day vogel

. 356 . chapter eleven The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 Only once in the 2,000 years of contact between China and Japan has an emperor of Japan or China visited the other country. It was unimaginable that the Chinese would ever have welcomed Emperor Hirohito, the highest symbol of Japanese invaders. After Emperor Hirohito died in January 1989, Japanese political leaders initially tried to play down his responsibility for the war, but China’s foreign minister, Qian Qichen, representing China at Emperor Hirohito’s funeral ceremonies in Tokyo, rebuked the Japanese for this and told them they should study their history. Not only Chinese spokespersons but also Western and even many Japanese leaders and writers acknowledged that Emperor Hirohito had attended meetings at which war plans were discussed. In 1989, the succession to the throne of Akihito, who at the end of World War II was only eleven years old, provided an opportunity to highlight the new era of peaceful relations between the two countries. It also gave China, which had been the target of sanctions by Western countries for its crackdown against protesters around Tiananmen Square on June 1989, a chance to showcase its return to the world of international diplomacy. Emperor Akihito’s Visit to China General Secretary Jiang Zemin visited Japan from April 6 to 10, 1992, to lay the groundwork for Emperor Akihito’s visit to China. In Tokyo, Jiang met with Emperor Akihito, high-level Japanese officials, and people from various walks of life. Japanese officials wanted to make sure that a visit by Emperor Akihito to China would not be used by the Chinese to publicize Japanese brutalities during the war, and China provided such assurances. Because some details of the visit were still unresolved while General Secretary Jiang Zemin was in Tokyo, the emperor’s decision to make the trip was not yet publicly announced. Discussions about the visit and Japan’s planning for the trip proceeded under the leadership of Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichi, a well-educated cosmopolitan official who was considered sympathetic to China, and Chief Cabinet Secretary Kato Koichi, a leading Diet member who spoke Chinese and had previously served as a diplomat in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.1 On October 23, 1992, only four days after the close of China’s Fourteenth Party Congress, Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko arrived in China for a five-day visit. In Tiananmen Square, the Japanese emperor was welcomed with a twenty-one-gun salute and a Chinese band playing the Japanese national anthem. Chinese police had cleared the streets of potential protesters, and no incidents occurred. The emperor was warmly welcomed by General Secretary Jiang Zemin and President Yang Shangkun, both of whom were restrained in their criticism of Japan. Beijing’s mayor, Chen Xitong, who accompanied Emperor Akihito to the Great Wall, reported that he was “very friendly to China,” adding, “we very much welcome him.” Chinese television described Emperor Akihito’s visit as symbolizing the role that Japan was now playing as a peace-loving country. Wu Jianmin, then spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, announced, “It is up to the Japanese side to decide what remarks the emperor will make during his visit to China.” At the opening banquet in Beijing, Emperor Akihito acknowledged Japanese aggression during World War II and the suffering that had been caused by Japan, saying, “During the long history of Sino-Japanese relations, there was a short period when Japan caused the Chinese people to live in dire misery, about which I feel deep regret.” Emperor Akihito visited Xi’an, the site of the Tang dynasty capital that had played such a key role in the formation of Japanese civilization. At the Shaanxi Provincial Museum in Xi’an, the emperor and empress viewed a stone tablet inscribed with the characters 平成 (in Chinese, the characters are read as pingcheng, “preserving peace,” but in Japanese, they refer to heisei, the name Emperor Akihito had chosen as the reign name for his era). This was a testimony to the deep cultural links between the two countries. There were no unpleasant incidents during the entire trip, and the visit was a high point in the history of relations between the two countries. However, by 1992 new issues were arising that would have an impact on the relationship. That year, China passed a domestic law that for the first china and japan . 358 . time provided a legal basis for its assertion that the Senkaku /Diaoyu Islands were part of Chinese territory. By 1996 China was carrying out oil exploration in the vicinity. China began increasing pressure on the issue of the Senkaku /Diaoyu Islands. As tensions over the islands rose, public opinion in both countries began to change. By 2006 only 27 percent of Japanese surveyed said they had positive views of China, and only 21 percent of Chinese respondents expressed positive attitudes toward Japan. The relationship would continue to deteriorate until 2015. Sources of Tension after 1992 There were several reasons for the worsening of relations between China and Japan. One was the loss of key “bridge builders” in the two governments, senior members who had worked to normalize relations. The Exit of Deng, Tanaka, and Other Bridge Builders A few days before Emperor Akihito traveled to China, Deng Xiaoping was photographed at the 1992 Fourteenth Party Congress as he passed leadership of the party over to Jiang Zemin. Deng had been firmly committed to improving relations with Japan. With his unassailable Communist Party credentials and his seven years spent fighting the Japanese, Deng was not vulnerable to charges of being soft on Japan. In contrast, Jiang Zemin was too young to have fought in the Sino-Japanese War and because Jiang’s father, like other Chinese businessmen, had had some contacts with Japanese occupation officials during World War II, Jiang was more vulnerable to criticism if he were judged to be soft on Japan. Some say that Jiang had a scar on his leg from bites by a dog owned by a Japanese official. Whatever the reason, Jiang did not enjoy close relations with Japanese leaders, and unlike Deng, he did not publicly urge that China should maintain good relations with Japan. After Liao Chengzhi died in 1983, no Chinese leader had comparable knowledge of Japan and such deep friendships. In the course of negotiating normalization, Tanaka Kakuei, Ohira Masayoshi, and Sonoda Sunao had developed personal relationships with their counterparts, but by 1992 they were no longer available. Tanaka was arrested in 1976, Ohira died in 1980, The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 . 359 . and Sonoda died in 1984. Some of their successors endeavored to continue working with China, but compared with those who built the bridges to normalize relations in 1972 and to negotiate the Treaty of Peace and Friendship in 1978, they lacked the personal connections to Chinese leaders and the determination to maintain the relationship. The Collapse of the Soviet Union From 1969, following clashes between China and the Soviet Union along their border, until 1991, when the Soviet Union was dissolved, China, Japan, and the United States had a shared strategic interest in cooperating against the Soviet Union. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, that shared interest disappeared. Thereafter, the inability of the three countries to count on the cooperation of their former allies created uncertainties, which grew as both China and Japan expanded their military capacity and began to lay claim to the islands between them. The Reduced Importance of Japanese Assistance In the early 1980s Japan’s financial and technical assistance was critical in launching China’s industrial drive. In 1978, China’s GDP was $219 billion, and by 1993, as China’s growth was spurting forward, it had jumped to $1,712 billion. The second blast furnace at Baoshan Steelworks, built with Japanese assistance, was opened in 1991. China had enough resources by this point that Japanese assistance was no longer crucial. From 1989 to 1992 the Japanese had played a key role in breaking through international sanctions on business and trade with China, but by 1992 the sanctions had greatly eased. Furthermore, by 1993 it was clear that the Japanese economy was not going to recover its rapid growth after the burst of its economic bubble in 1989. Japan was no longer such an attractive model for China. President Lee Teng-hui and Japan’s Links to Taiwanese Localism When the “locals” took over the leadership of the Taiwan government from the “mainlanders” in 1992, Beijing’s leaders worried that local resistance to a reunion with the mainland would grow, and that Japan would support the china and japan . 360 . resistance. Chiang Ching-kuo, who became president of Taiwan after his father, Chiang Kai-shek, died in 1975, believed that long-term stability on Taiwan required giving local people a greater role in governance. He chose a local, Lee Teng-hui, to be vice president, and when Chiang Ching-kuo died of illness in 1992, Lee became president, despite the efforts by some Nationalist Party officials to block his accession. Before Lee’s presidency, elections were held in Taiwan as if Taiwan represented all of China and as if the Guomindang had a chance of retaking the mainland. Representatives of the dif­ferent provinces, nearly all of them mainlanders who had fled to Taiwan after the Nationalists lost the Civil War, selected the members of the legislature. After becoming president, Lee Teng-hui arranged for direct elections of the legislature. The first election was held in 1992, and after that the locals, who made up roughly two-thirds of the population of Taiwan, dominated Taiwan politics. Chinese leaders in Beijing knew that Japan had earlier supported a twoChina policy and that Lee Teng-hui and other locals had close relations with Japan. As a child, Lee Teng-hui had learned Japanese before he had learned Mandarin Chinese. In 1944 and 1945 he had served in the Japanese Army, and his brother died fighting for the Japanese. He had attended Japanese schools in Taiwan and won a scholarship to Kyoto Imperial University, where he studied briefly. As president, he maintained close ties to Japanese leaders, some of whom had worked in Taiwan before 1945. Chinese government officials worried that Japan would support Lee Teng-hui’s efforts to remain independent from the mainland. To maintain pressure on Taiwan to accept mainland rule, Beijing officials sought to restrict the international space in which Taiwan’s officials could function. As a condition for normalizing relations, China had required Japan and the United States to agree that their high officials would not visit Taiwan and that top Taiwanese officials not be allowed to visit their countries. Lee Teng-hui sought to break through this constraint. In 1994 he visited several Latin American countries where Taiwan still had formal diplomatic relations, and he requested permission from U.S. officials to stop in Hawaii for refueling on his way home. American officials, trying to balance their agreement with Beijing with Lee’s request to stop in Hawaii, decided he could land in Hawaii, but they restricted him to a military base. The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 . 361 . Lee Teng-hui publicized his confinement to the Hawaiian military base and this aroused many Americans, who complained that their country had coddled dictators during the Cold War and said it was time to support democratic principles. Why, they asked, should the United States follow the wishes of China, which had shot students protesting near Tiananmen Square, and not allow the visit of a leader of Taiwan, a democratic nation—a leader who had also spent many years in the United States earning a Ph.D. degree from Cornell? The following year, in 1995, Cornell University invited Lee Teng-hui to speak at alumni events. The U.S. House of Representatives voted 398 to 0 and the Senate 97 to 1 that Lee should be allowed to come to the United States to speak at Cornell. Given this popular support, President Bill Clinton felt he had no choice but to suspend the agreement with the mainland that did not allow high-level Taiwan officials to visit the United States. Lee was granted entry and he made full use of the visit that June, attracting a large audience and positive international opinion. Cornell University treated him as a heroic freedom fighter. Mainland officials were furious with the United States and Canada for granting Lee Teng-hui a visa, and with the Japanese, who were sympathetic to the invitation. In July, shortly after Lee’s visit to Cornell, China issued a “warning” to Taiwan about trying to seek independence by conducting missile tests that landed very close to the small Japanese-held island of Yonaguni at the southern end of the Ryukyu chain. In August, Chinese officials conducted a second series of missile tests in the East China Sea, an area 80 to 100 miles north of Taiwan. China also began conducting military exercises in Fujian province, situated opposite Taiwan across the Taiwan Strait. In November, China conducted amphibious assault exercises, and in March 1996, China fired missiles some 25 to 35 miles from Keelung and Kaohsiung, ports on Taiwan’s southwest coast, disrupting nearby air and sea traffic. The United States had taken the position that it did not oppose the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland, but it did oppose the use of force to achieve that end. Officials in the United States worried that China was preparing to invade Taiwan. Following the March missile firing, U.S. officials announced that the United States was sending two carrier groups to the vicinity of Taiwan, thus staging the biggest display of U.S. military might in Asia since the Vietnam War. Shortly thereafter, China conducted more amphibious landing exercises and purchased additional china and japan . 362 . military equipment from Russia. Many feared a military confrontation. Jiang Zemin, acutely aware of how weak the Chinese military had become since Deng’s 1978 decision to promote economic development instead of investing heavily in military modernization, decided to increase military expenditures. Deng, in contrast, had advocated a policy of taoguang yanghui (“avoid the limelight, never take the lead”). In the 1980s Taiwanese locals had begun to develop closer relations with the mainland, but by the early twenty-first century, feeling overwhelmed by the mainland’s influence and pressure on Taiwan, many people in Taiwan began to identify themselves as Taiwanese rather than Chinese. In the decades after 1949, because children of mainlanders and children of locals had now grown up and attended schools together, hostilities between the two groups gradually eased, although they did not disappear. And although Taiwanese relations with Japan grew weaker over time, they too did not disappear. Chinese officials continued to worry about the Japanese, who were close to Taiwan locals who wanted to maintain their independence from the mainland. Growing Chinese Fears of a Japanese Military Revival after the Gulf War Ever since Japan was defeated in 1945, Chinese leaders had been concerned about the return of Japanese militarism. In the eyes of many Chinese as far back as the Ming dynasty, the true nature of the Japanese people was revealed in the behavior of blood-thirsty Japanese pirates. In the late sixteenth century, violent Japanese troops under Toyotomi Hideyoshi advanced through Korea on their way to China. In 1894–1895, aggressive Japanese troops invaded Korea and China. And many Chinese adults still remembered the cruel Japanese military occupation from 1937 to 1945, while those who had not personally experienced it had heard about it. Following World War II the Chinese public had no contact with the Japanese after they left China, and therefore they had no opportunity to see how firmly the vast majority of Japan’s citizens had turned their back on militarism. In 1969, when U.S. president Richard Nixon announced at a press conference in Guam that while the United States would help, nations should be responsible for their own security, the Chinese began to worry that an The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 . 363 . independent Japanese military would rise again. In the mid-1980s the Chinese became concerned that Prime Minister Nakasone was reviving the Japanese military, and they saw his visit to the Yasukuni Shrine as a sign that Japan was again honoring its military past. In the late 1980s, as the Japanese economy grew rapidly and tensions between Japan and the United States increased, Chinese leaders worried that Japan might push to increase its independence from the United States. If so, would not Japan use the new military technology it had acquired through the U.S.-Japan Alliance to strengthen its own military? After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, China’s leaders wondered whether the U.S.-Japan Alliance, the cork that was keeping Japanese militarism under control, could last. After the Gulf War ended in 1991, the United States was deeply critical of Japan, which imported so much oil from the Middle East, for not contributing more to the war effort. The United States pressed Japan to make a bigger contribution to global peacekeeping by getting “boots on the ground” when troubles appeared around the world. To the Chinese, this increased the danger that the cork was getting out of the bottle. Over the next several years Japanese officials agreed to take on added international and financial responsibility, not only in covering the expenses for U.S. bases in Japan but also in sharing more military technology and playing a larger role in international peacekeeping activities. By 1996 Japan had agreed to provide logistical support if contingencies should arise in the areas around Japan. In the 1990s the Japanese media were filled with stories of North Korea’s nuclear developments and North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens. When North Korea fired a rocket not far from Japan in 1993, Japan’s anxieties increased and Japanese voices calling for strengthening their own military grew stronger. President Jimmy Carter, before coming to office, had proposed that U.S. troops should be pulled out of South Korea. Was the period of U.S dominance over Japan’s security policies that had begun with the Allied Occupation now coming to an end? Some in Japan wondered if they could depend on the United States for support against North Korea, and if they could not, why would Japan not expand its military? In short, with the end of the Cold War the Chinese had reason to fear that the U.S.- Japan Alliance would not last and that the United States could no longer keep the “cork in the bottle.” china and japan . 364 . Growing Japanese Concern about China’s Military Power After the Tiananmen Square Incident in 1989, the Japanese grew more worried about the nature of the Chinese political system, and Japanese media were filled with items critical of China. The Japanese also wondered how the Chinese, expressing anti-Japanese rhetoric, would behave as China’s economic and military power grew. China’s economy did not yet compare with Japan’s, but China was a rising power that could one day challenge Japan for dominance in East Asia. Although foreign sanctions on China following the government’s clash with protesters near Tiananmen Square had slowed economic growth, by 1993, following Deng Xiaoping’s southern journey in 1992 and the easing of international sanctions, China’s economic growth rate suddenly increased to 14 percent that year and was poised to continue. Deng Xiaoping had kept down military expenditures in the 1980s to concentrate on economic growth, but by the 1990s the economic base was much stronger than when he took power in 1978, and his successors were putting a higher percentage of the national budget into the military. In the tensions after Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui’s visit to Cornell in 1995, when China fired a missile over Taiwan and the United States sent two carrier groups to the region, Chinese military expenditures grew even faster than the economy, which was continuing to grow at an average of roughly 10 percent a year. The friction over the Senkaku /Diaoyu Islands that began to intensify in the mid-1990s reflected Japan’s increasing concern about China’s intentions. For the previous hundred years, Japanese defense officials had been concerned about threats from two fronts: the northern front—that is, the Soviet Union—and the western front, the Korean Peninsula. Now they had to deal with a third front in the southwest: the threat from China over Taiwan and the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. China’s Concern about the Weakening of the U.S.-Japan Alliance Chas Freeman, an American diplomat who was assigned to the Pentagon from 1993 to 1994, observed that after the Soviet Union collapsed, U.S. military planners suffered from what he called an “enemy deficit syndrome.” The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 . 365 . U.S. military officials, backed by defense industries that sought congressional support for a large military budget, transferred their concern from the Soviet Union to China, and the United States continued advancing its military technology. The Chinese were worried not only that advances in U.S. military weapons would be passed on to the Japanese, but also that Japan, after acquiring those new capacities, might then begin to act more independently. From 1991 to 1996, following the end of the Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, uncertainties about the future of the U.S.-Japan Alliance increased Chinese worries about Japan becoming an independent military power. On April 17, 1996, however, when President Clinton and Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto met in Tokyo and signed the Japan-U.S. Joint Declaration on Security Alliance for the Twenty-First Century, China became more confident that the Japanese military would not become independent, at least in the near future. The Joint Declaration stated that both the United States and Japan had an interest “in furthering cooperation with China.” But Chinese officials, aware of Western concern about the rise of China, suspected that the declaration was aimed at containing China. During the following year, the United States and Japan revised the guidelines that included Japanese participation in “the areas surrounding Japan,” causing the Chinese to worry about Japan’s activities around the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands and Taiwan. China’s Patriotic Education Campaign After Chinese leaders put down the Tiananmen Square protests, they had reason to worry about whether they could retain the support of Chinese youth. Two years later, observing the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the end of communism in Eastern Europe, Chinese leaders could not help wondering if China might confront a similar fate. How were China’s leaders to respond? Deng Xiaoping decided the answer was to launch a Patriotic Education Campaign aimed at strengthening loyalty to the nation, especially among Chinese youth. During the Civil War, Mao called for class struggle, stoking the antagonism of peasants and workers toward landlords and capitalists, to win china and japan . 366 . popular support against the Guomindang. As late as 1966–1976 during the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards were mobilized to attack those with “bad class backgrounds”—that is, landlords and the bourgeoisie. But with the reform and opening of 1978, Chinese leaders encouraged independent businesses and sought cooperation with capitalist countries. To proceed with their modernization plans, they also sought the support of the best and the brightest of China’s youth, some of whom had come from bad class backgrounds, as well as the support of businesspeople in Taiwan, including followers of Chiang Kai-shek. The Chinese media did not call attention to the end of class struggle, but by the Thirteenth Party Congress in 1987, publicity about class struggle had faded away and attacks on those from bad class backgrounds had ended. Chiang Kai-shek, who had been criticized for supporting the capitalists and landlords, was praised for his contributions to the nation. Museums that displayed ancient pottery no longer posted signs saying that the artifacts had been made by the working classes who had suffered from oppression. The pottery had been made by Chinese artisans. In 1992, the way to win broad support for both the government and the Chinese Communist Party was through patriotism—by recalling and celebrating the struggle of all Chinese people, of all classes and of all minority groups, against the foreign imperialists who had invaded China. The media denounced the imperialists who oppressed the Chinese during what China called the “century of humiliation,” beginning with the Opium War and continuing through the Japanese invasion and the atrocities committed by the Japanese during the war. The appeal to patriotism had deep roots among twentieth-century Chinese political leaders seeking broader public support. The Patriotic Education Campaign, first introduced in 1992, made use of not only print media but also TV, the new medium of the day, which had become widespread in the 1980s. The campaign had begun with an announcement in August 1991 and instructions that every school in China was to have a well-developed patriotic curriculum within three years. New middle-school and high-school textbooks began appearing in 1992. In September 1993, when Beijing lost to Sydney in its bid to host the 2000 Summer Olympic Games, students throughout the country were mobilized to stage protests. After denouncing government officials for their actions in 1989, students were now cheering The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 . 367 . the government officials who complained about the biases of the foreign countries that blocked Beijing’s effort to host the 2000 Summer Olympics. Patriotic education was working. The Patriotic Education Campaign was fully launched in August 1994, with directions for implementing the campaign issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Among the announced goals was the enhancement of cohesion and national pride. After 1994, junior and senior high-school students were required to take courses on patriotism, and all students applying to university had to take entrance examinations that tested their knowledge of the content of the patriotic education courses. Chinese discussions of Japan’s past atrocities and Japan’s failure to apologize adequately were central components of the Patriotic Education Campaign. In the 1980s, following Deng Xiaoping’s efforts to build a cultural base for better relations with Japan, Chinese audiences had been shown movies that displayed many sides of Japan, but after 1992 the Chinese media paid more attention to subjects such as the Nanjing Massacre, Japan’s biochemical warfare, the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers carrying out the scorched-earth policy known as “kill all, burn all, loot all,” and Japan’s exploitation of “comfort women” to satisfy the sexual desires of soldiers. In November 1993 the Publicity (formerly Propaganda) Department of the Chinese Communist Party issued a circular promoting patriotism through movies and television series. By that time, China already had some 230 million television sets. Patriotic television series and movies about the Sino-Japanese War typically depicted Japanese soldiers committing cruelties and Chinese soldiers, Communist guerrilla fighters, and Chinese youths heroically fighting the Japanese enemy. Of all the themes for stirring patriotism, none proved as popular as World War II movies showing the horrible deeds of Japanese soldiers. Some of the movies designed for young audiences showed Chinese children bravely helping to fight the Japanese. In 2000, one such movie, Devils at the Doorstep, was banned from circulation because it showed a Japanese soldier being too friendly to Chinese villagers. Many such commercial films were very popular and financially profitable. The 2011 film Flowers of War, depicting the Japanese raping Chinese women and slicing up Chinese corpses with swords during the Nanjing Massacre, was the highest grossing film of the year. Nevertheless, some of the commercial movies were ridiculed by Chinese intellectuals for their unrealistic china and japan . 368 . exaggerations. In one film, for instance, a Chinese boy throws a hand grenade that destroys a Japanese plane. Since 1993 Chinese moviegoers and TV viewers have had ample opportunities to view movies depicting the horrible Japanese and the heroic Chinese. The anniversary of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on September 18, 1931, and National Humiliation Day, remembering when China was forced to yield to the Twenty-One Demands on May 9, 1915, became occasions for mobilizing anti-Japanese sentiment. On August 15, 2005, the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War II, China saw very large anti-Japanese demonstrations. The Chinese expressed outrage any time high Japanese political leaders visited the Yasukuni Shrine, where the souls of class-A war criminals were enshrined among the 2.5 million others who died for their country. In 1994, Chinese local governments were directed to erect monuments and museums commemorating the anti-Japanese struggles of the Chinese people. Museums mounted displays showing heroic Chinese people fighting the Japanese. They built monuments marking the battles that had taken place, and held commemorations at the gravesites of Chinese heroes in the war with Japan. Forty national sites, which also involved foreign countries, were selected in 1995 to promote patriotic education, half of which were sites involving the Japanese. Many people remembered the horror stories about life after the 1931 Japanese invasion and could easily be enlisted to help educate China’s young people. According to data collected by the Pew Research Center, by 2006 only 21 percent of Chinese people had favorable impressions of Japan, and by 2016 that number had fallen to 14 percent.2 To strengthen patriotic sentiment among China’s well-educated readers, one of the most effective means was the publication Cankao Xiaoxi (Reference News), which prints Chinese translations of articles from the foreign press. This newspaper was formerly available only to party members, but beginning in the 1980s it was openly sold on the streets. Because the articles were direct translations from foreign media, it became a favorite source of news for the educated public, including students. By selecting the headlines as well as the articles that were published, propaganda officials could shape the messages that they wanted to reach the Chinese public. Officials chose articles by extreme right-wing Japanese who denied historical events, even if those rightists were not well known and considered ridiculous by The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 . 369 . most people in Japan, Cankao Xiaoxi readers in China assumed they represented the general Japanese mood. The Chinese public therefore came to overestimate the extent to which the Japanese public denied certain historical events. Even though Japanese military expenditures did not increase significantly after 1990, the articles selected for reprinting by Cankao Xiaoxi conveyed the impression that rising militarism in Japan was a serious problem. Some of the strongest expressions of anti-Japanese sentiment since the mid-1990s have come not from the elder Chinese generation that had experienced the Japanese occupation but from young people who had received a patriotic education. By 1998, Chinese children could play popular video games online in which heroic Chinese characters fought against Japanese invaders. The Patriotic Education Campaign was quite effective in increasing anti-Japanese attitudes. China’s Patriotic Education Campaign also helped strengthen antiJapanese public opinion in other countries that had suffered under the Japanese during the war, particularly Korea and Southeast Asia. The campaign found resonance as well in Western countries, where what China criticized as Japan’s failure to apologize fully for its actions in World War II was contrasted with the Germans’ thorough self-criticism for their nation’s wartime atrocities. In Japan, the Ministry of Education provides guidelines for the material school textbooks should cover, and the requirements for Japanese textbooks give little space to modern history. Thus when Chinese youth, who have received China’s patriotic education, meet Japanese youth, they commonly conclude that while Japanese students may know that it was wrong for Japan to invade China and that Japan should apologize, they have little knowledge of Japan’s past aggression and have not sufficiently faced their history. When Japanese visitors to China saw the anti-Japanese movies being shown, and Japanese TV viewers saw dramatic images of Chinese people throwing rocks at Japanese shops in China and the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Beijing without police restraint, and Chinese planes and ships buzzing Japanese planes and ships near the Senkaku /Diaoyu Islands, the Japanese became fearful about China. The strong commitment in Japan to china and japan . 370 . pacifism and antimilitarism has not disappeared, but the news from China has strengthened nationalist sentiment in Japan, especially among a minority right-wing fringe. Many Japanese fear a Chinese threat and have a sense that the Japanese living today are the victims of false accusations. By the mid-1990s the number of Japanese tourists to China began to fall off sharply. Pew data from a survey in 2006 revealed that the number of Japanese who expressed positive feelings toward China had dropped to 27 percent. By 2016 it had fallen further to 11 percent where it remained even in 2017 and 2018, when the number of Chinese respondents reporting positive feelings toward Japan rose to nearly 40 percent from a low of 10 percent. The numbers of Japanese visitors to China did not rise. The growing tensions between China and Japan after 1992 coincided with the growing confidence in China, and the corresponding fear in Japan, that the size of the Chinese economy would soon surpass that of Japan, and that the size of China’s military and its weaponry would also soon surpass Japan’s. China Takes the Dominant Position in Asia In 1993 China’s GNP was still only $443 billion, whereas Japan, with onetenth of China’s population, had a GNP of $4.4 trillion, almost ten times as large. But that same year China’s economy grew by 14 percent and seemed poised to continue growing at a rate of more than 10 percent a year, while the Japanese economy was by then stagnating, after the bubble burst in 1989. After 1997, when Japan suffered in the Asian financial crisis and China did not, Chinese officials were confident that their economic and political systems were working better than Japan’s. China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 further boosted Chinese confidence. China had acquired nuclear weapons in 1965 and Japan had chosen not to develop them, but in 1993 the Japanese military, though small, was superior to China’s in terms of technology and training. Beginning in 1996, however, Chinese military spending began growing even faster than its economy, while Japan’s military expenditures remained below 1 percent of its stagnating economy. The Chinese gained confidence that they would soon have more warships and warplanes than Japan. By 2015, although Japanese military specialists believed their military training and technology The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 . 371 . were still ahead of China’s, Chinese naval tonnage was 3.2 times that of Japan, China had 2.7 times the number of aircraft, and it had 260 ballistic missiles whereas Japan had none.3 The year 2008 was an important milestone for China’s growing confidence, when China was little affected by the global financial crisis that shook Japan and the West. In 2008 the Japanese stock market index fell to less than one-fifth of its peak in 1989. Chinese and Japanese leaders already knew that China’s economy would soon surpass that of Japan, and the Western financial crisis further strengthened the belief of the Chinese that their system was as good as the economic systems in the West. Just as the Tokyo Olympics of 1964 had symbolized Japan’s debut as a modern industrialized country, and the Olympic Games in Seoul in 1988 represented South Korea’s debut on the world stage, so the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, presented with a grandeur beyond any previous games, served as China’s debut as a major global power that was surpassing Japan and poised to begin challenging the United States. Two years later, in August 2010, Tokyo announced that in the second quarter of 2010, according to World Bank figures, China’s GNP was $1.38 trillion and Japan’s GNP was $1.28 trillion. After 2010 China still faced many problems—in completing its modernization throughout the country, in helping residents who had not yet achieved a middle-class standard of living, in creating a social service net for the entire population, in making the transition to a consumer-oriented service economy, and in constructing a world-class high-technology sector. However, the century of humiliation was over and China was no longer daunted by the achievements of the West. The difficulties between China and Japan in managing the transition in their relationship were exacerbated by the instability of Japan’s political leadership from 1994 to 2012. Chinese leadership during this period was relatively stable: President Jiang Zemin was formally selected for two terms, from 1992 to 2002, and President Hu Jintao, from 2002 to 2012. Japan had enjoyed stable government by leaders from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 1955 through the late 1980s. Then reforms to the electoral system were enacted in 1994, designed to give rise to a strong two-party system that would weaken various factions by replacing the election districts that had each elected several members of the Diet with 180 smaller districts that each elected a single member, and allowing eleven more china and japan . 372 . members to be selected from proportional-representation districts. Because some Diet members from multiple-seat districts lost out when only one member could be selected by their new district, many experienced senior members who had provided a long-term perspective were no longer in government after 1994. Furthermore, during the eighteen years from 1994 to 2012, when Abe Shinzo was elected prime minister, Japan had thirteen prime ministers. Some made an effort to improve relations with China, but the frequent changes of leadership—and especially the period of rule by the inexperienced Democratic Party of Japan from 2009 to 2012—made it difficult for Chinese and Japanese leaders to develop and maintain long-term understandings. The issue that became the greatest focus of tension during the transition from 1993 to 2010 was the dispute over the Senkaku /Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. The Dispute over the Senkaku /Diaoyu Islands The eight small islands in question, called the Senkaku Islands by Japan and the Diaoyu Islands by China, are located approximately 100 miles northeast of Taiwan, 100 miles northwest of Ishigaki (in the Ryukyu chain), and 200 miles from mainland China. They have been uninhabited since World War II. In 1971 the U.S. agreement to return Okinawa to Japanese rule and to transfer administration of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands to Japan aroused concerns in Taiwan and on the Chinese mainland that Japan was again beginning to expand as a military power. The Taiwan government and Chinese activists from Hong Kong and Taiwan have supported the mainland in claiming that the islands are Chinese territory. The islands became the focus of a dispute over fishing rights when fishermen from China and Japan, having exhausted resources close to their shores, began fishing farther offshore and clashing with each other near the islands. In the 1970s it appeared that significant undersea oil supplies might also be located near the islands, and this heightened interest in controlling the area. But it was the islands’ strategic location and the military competition in the area that inflamed the issue. In 1973, within the framework of the third United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), nations began discussions concerning rights to the use of the oceans. Although UNCLOS did not establish The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 . 373 . rules about how to determine sovereignty, it did establish rules about exclusive economic zones, low-tide elevations, and rights to maritime resources, including petroleum found beneath the ocean floor. Nations began rushing to make claims on islands in the Western Pacific as well as claims to the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. According to the Convention of the Law of the Sea agreed to in 1982, coastal states have sovereignty over the waters within 12 nautical miles of their land at low tide. The agreement also allows for an exclusive economic zone of 200 nautical miles (1 nautical mile is equal to 1.15 statute miles) from a country’s coast. The distance between Japan and continental China is 360 nautical miles, so there is no clear agreement on the rights of Japan and China to the seabed. Most countries of the world, including Japan and China, have signed the UNCLOS agreement. Although the United States signed the agreement and has chosen to abide by it, it has not ratified it. Once the Senkaku /Diaoyu Islands became a focus of attention, both China and Japan pulled out their historical records to strengthen their claims to the islands. China presented documents that reported that Chinese ships had first charted the islands in 1534. China also argued that the Potsdam Agreement of 1945 provided that Taiwan and the affiliated islands would be returned to China. Japan pointed out that the Potsdam Agreement did not specifically mention the Senkaku /Diaoyu Islands as being among the islands near Taiwan that were to be returned to China. It maintained that the islands had traditionally been used as landmarks for all navigators in the region but had not belonged to any one country. Japan announced that it had surveyed the islands in the 1880s and found them uninhabited. Therefore, by a cabinet decision in January 1895, prior to the end of the Sino-Japanese War, it had declared sovereignty over the islands. Japan added that the islands had been returned to Japan by the United States in 1971 as part of the reversion of Okinawa to Japan. China claimed that the islands were assigned to Japan by the 1895 Shimonoseki Treaty at the end of the First Sino-Japanese War, and that with Japan’s surrender in 1945, sovereignty over the islands returned to China. Japan does not acknowledge that there is a dispute over sovereignty of the islands. The United States has taken the position that the question of sovereignty has not been resolved, but that the Japanese have administrative control over the islands. When Chinese ships and planes began operations china and japan . 374 . near the islands, U.S. officials made it clear that if the Japanese were to be attacked on or near the islands, the United States would, according to Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan Security Agreement, come to Japan’s defense. In April 1978, shortly before the Treaty of Peace and Friendship was concluded, nearly 100 small Chinese fishing vessels entered the area, flying banners claiming that the islands were Chinese territory. However, when Deng Xiaoping visited Japan in October 1978 he announced at his press conference that China and Japan “could cooperate in sharing the economic benefits of the islands, and that the question of sovereignty could be resolved by wise leaders in future generations.” Disputes escalated in the 1990s, as Japan began taking more responsibility for defending the waters around the Japanese islands and China began expanding its military capacity over a broader geographical area. China’s desire to reunite Taiwan with the mainland and the possibility that it might use force to achieve that goal attracted more attention to the nearby Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, which would be of strategic importance if conflict were to arise over Taiwan. In 1994 China began sending scientific research vessels near the territorial waters to explore the seabed. After the tensions in the Taiwan Strait in 1995, the Chinese greatly increased their investment in naval resources to be better prepared in the case of a clash near Taiwan. In July 1996, a rightwing Japanese youth put up a lighthouse on one of the islets, and in August a war memorial stone was erected on Ishigaki, one of the Senkaku/ Diaoyu Islands. Following this construction, activists from Hong Kong and Taiwan, in support of China’s claims, tried to land on the islands, and ten fishing boats from Taiwan appeared in the vicinity. The Japanese sent in ships to try to prevent Chinese ships from moving into Japanese territorial waters as defined by UNCLOS. The emotions over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands reached their peak just when China was replacing Japan as the largest economy in East Asia. The Transition to China’s Dominance, 1993–2012 During the ups and downs as China surpassed Japan as the largest economy in Asia, tensions remained high but both sides tried to prevent the conflict from getting out of control. The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 . 375 . The Murayama Declaration, 1995 In 1995, fifty years after the end of the China War, Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi of Japan made a noble effort to stop the deterioration of relations. After tensions reached a peak when China ignored Japan’s request that it end its nuclear testing, Prime Minister Murayama traveled to China in May  1995 to try to improve relations. Murayama, who served from June 30, 1994, to January 11, 1996, was the first non-LDP leader to be prime minister since 1955. A Socialist who led a coalition government, he was a modest and popular leader, the son of a fisherman from Beppu on the northeast coast of Kyushu. He had long believed that Japan should acknowledge the atrocities of World War II. During his visit to China, Murayama went to Xi’an to pay respects to the ancient capital from which Japan had learned so much. He also visited the Marco Polo Bridge, where war had broken out in 1937, to show his empathy for the Chinese suffering during the war and to apologize for Japan’s aggression. On August 15, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II, Prime Minister Murayama gave a speech drafted by Tanino Sakutaro, formerly ambassador to China, expressing his hopes for close cooperation between China and Japan in the twenty-first century. Murayama declared, “Japan, following a mistaken national policy, advanced along the road to war, . . . and through its colonial rule and aggression . . . caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries. Allow me once again to express my deep remorse and state my heartfelt apology. . . . I would like to reaffirm once more that the Japanese people are firmly determined that Japan will never become a military power.” His speech was the fullest apology that a top Japanese leader had ever given for Japanese aggression during World War II. In the future, other Japanese prime ministers would repeat parts of the speech. Murayama was warmly welcomed in China by President Jiang Zemin and Premier Li Peng. In September 1997, to further reduce tensions, Murayama’s successor, Prime Minister Hashimoto Ryutaro, traveled to Beijing to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the normalization of relations. Prime Minister Hashimoto offered reassurances that the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty was not aimed at China, and he confirmed that Japan did not support Taiwan’s independence from mainland rule. china and japan . 376 . Jiang Zemin’s Visit to Japan, 1998 On the twentieth anniversary of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship and Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 visit to Japan, President Jiang Zemin made the first formal state visit by a Chinese leader to Japan in the history of the two countries. When Deng had visited Japan in October 1978, he was not officially China’s top leader and therefore he had not been received with the protocol of a formal state visit. Jiang Zemin had visited Japan briefly in 1992, before he was president, to help arrange the Japanese emperor’s visit to China. This time, during his full six-day state visit, from November 25 to 30, Jiang was welcomed by Prime Minister Obuchi Keizo, treated with formal banquets, welcomed by Emperor Akihito, hosted by political and business leaders, and escorted by Prime Minister Obuchi on trips to Sendai and Hokkaido. The visit was planned to solidify good relations between the two countries, but in the end it led to heightened tensions. The state visit by Jiang Zemin was originally scheduled to take place before a visit to Japan by South Korean president Kim Dae-jung, but serious flash floods in China caused Jiang to delay his trip until after Kim’s visit. President Kim’s time in Japan was highly successful, and by comparison, Jiang’s visit was judged to be less so. In his speech to the Japanese Diet on October 8, Kim Dae-jung, who, twenty-five year earlier, had been kidnapped in Tokyo by Korean political enemies and had nearly been killed when he was on a small boat headed toward Korea, thanked the Japanese for helping to save his life. He said that when Japan had pursued an imperial path, it had caused great pain to the people of Korea and other nations. But, speaking in Japanese, he acknowledged that Japan had changed after World War II, and he said that he looked forward to future cooperation. Kim’s message created a high point of goodwill between Korea and Japan. Prime Minister Obuchi and the Japanese public were moved by Kim’s message, and the leaders signed a joint declaration in which Obuchi expressed deep remorse for Japan’s behavior during its occupation of Korea. When Jiang Zemin visited Japan, five years into the period of rapid Chinese growth that had resumed in 1993, he was representing a China that was increasingly confident and had just weathered the Asian financial crisis of 1997 with far less damage than Japan. China was also less worried that The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 . 377 . the United States might side against it with Japan. In June, President Clinton had made a ten-day visit to China to strengthen Sino-U.S. relations, and despite urging from Japanese officials, he had not stopped in Japan on the way home. Before Jiang Zemin’s visit, Chinese and Japanese officials, engaged in negotiations on the content of the statement the two sides would sign while Jiang was in Tokyo, were close to agreeing on a declaration that would enable Japan to express remorse without making a lengthy apology. But after Japan signed the long written apology with President Kim, Chinese officials requested that Japan sign a similar apology to China. To Jiang and the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people, Japan had not done enough to apologize for its history. Prime Minister Obuchi did say during Jiang’s visit, “The Japanese side is keenly conscious of the responsibility for the serious distress and damage that Japan caused to the Chinese people through its aggression against China during a certain period in the past and expressed deep remorse for this,” but Jiang did not regard this as sufficient. What Jiang did not realize was that the Japanese mood had been changing. The Japanese were tiring of China’s continued lecturing about Japan’s atrocities and its endless requests for apologies, its failure to acknowledge the apologies Japan had made, and its unwillingness to heed Japan’s requests, for its part, that China refrain from nuclear tests. Some Japanese were upset that in Japan, Jiang thanked the Japanese for the aid it had given China, but that this expression of appreciation was not reported in the Chinese press. During his state visit, a portion of Jiang Zemin’s evening banquet with Emperor Akihito was televised. In his brief presentation at the banquet, Jiang Zemin gave his opinions on how Japan should view history. To the Chinese, Jiang’s comments were appropriate, but to the Japanese it was highly inappropriate to use a banquet, which was meant to be a ceremonial occasion, for what seemed to them like a lecture by a teacher telling a pupil what he should do. Reports by Japanese journalists covering Jiang’s visit, reflecting growing irritation, heightened the perception of increasing Chinese arrogance. When Jiang pressed Prime Minister Obuchi to sign a written statement like the one he had signed with Kim Dae-jung, Jiang expected that, as in china and japan . 378 . the past, Japan would yield. However, Obuchi chose to give an oral apology and not a written one. The prime minister’s refusal to sign a written apology reflected his political judgment that the Japanese public was tired of China’s lectures, and his judgment turned out to be correct. To the Chinese, it showed that the Japanese were denying history and failing to show proper respect for the Chinese leader. Despite these tensions, during Jiang’s visit Japanese and Chinese officials did discuss ways in which the two countries might work together. They signed a joint declaration for cooperation in thirty-three areas, covering exchanges of officials, economic and scientific collaborations, cultural exchanges, and environmental projects. This declaration paved the way for the implementation of many cooperative efforts. After mainland China was given the China seat in the United Nations in 1971 (taking over the seat previously held by the Republic of China on Taiwan), Japan generally supported China’s participation in UN activities and in East Asian regional affairs. Although China opposed Japan’s permanent membership on the UN Security Council, it supported meetings with Japan in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Plus 3, which was just being launched.4 After Jiang’s visit, Japanese trade and investment in China continued to grow. In 1999, two-way trade between Japan and China totaled $66 billion, four times the amount in 1990. Prime Minister Obuchi’s Visit to China, November 1999 One year after Jiang’s visit, in a further effort to improve relations, Prime Minister Obuchi Keizo visited Beijing to join in the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic. Chinese diplomats, aware of the negative Japanese reaction to Jiang’s pressure on the history issue, were more restrained in asking for Japanese apologies. Prime Minister Obuchi met with Jiang Zemin, who thanked him for his hospitality in Tokyo. In his meeting with Premier Zhu Rongji, Obuchi indicated his support for China’s entry into the WTO. He continued to promote the thirty-three areas of cooperation that had been designated during Jiang’s visit to Japan, and he offered Japanese assistance for several programs, in particular those in Inner Mongolia, in which he expressed a personal interest. The visit did help lessen somewhat the deterioration in relations. The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 . 379 . Premier Zhu’s Visit to Japan, 2000 Zhu Rongji, who was highly respected in both China and Japan, was sent to Japan the next year to try to improve relations and solidify Japan’s support for China’s entry into the WTO. In Japan, Premier Zhu said that the Japanese people, like the Chinese, had suffered during World War II, and he did not request any more apologies. After he took part in a televised dialogue with several Japanese business and political leaders, Japanese viewers, as well as the leaders with whom he met, said they were very impressed with Zhu Rongji’s knowledge, frankness, and his desire to develop good business relations. Some even said they wished Japan had such a statesman leading their country. Officials on both sides acknowledged that the visit helped improve relations. Public opinion polls shortly after Zhu’s visit reflected a modest improvement in overall Japanese attitudes toward China. Slightly more Japanese respondents had positive opinions of China than had negative opinions. Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro and the Yasukuni Issue, 2001–2006 Shortly after he became prime minister in 2001, Koizumi tried to find a balance between resisting Chinese pressures and apologizing for Japan’s role in World War II. His political ally, Kato Koichi, consulted with Chinese officials, who advised him that if Koizumi were to visit the Yasukuni Shrine on August 13, 2001, instead of on August 15, the official anniversary of the end of the war, Chinese reaction would be less strong. Still, when Koizumi visited the Yasukuni Shrine on August 13, 2001, the Chinese press was very critical of the visit and demanded that Koizumi not visit the shrine again. The Chinese nonetheless allowed Koizumi to visit China shortly after his visit to the shrine, and on that trip he went to the Marco Polo Bridge Museum, where he acknowledged that Japan was wrong to start the war and apologized to the Chinese people. After that, Koizumi visited the Yasukuni Shrine each year. In 2006, following attacks on Japanese property and Japanese people in China, Koizumi made his final visit to the Yasukuni Shrine. He knew that within several years China would have an economy larger than Japan’s, but china and japan . 380 . he would not bow down. He made his final visit to the Yasukuni Shrine on August 15, the anniversary of the end of the war, a date that would especially annoy the Chinese. He said, “I do not go to justify the past war or to glorify militarism. I go with the feeling that we should not wage war again and that we must not forget the sacrifice of those who went to war and died. I am not going there for the class-A war criminals.” The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that Koizumi’s visit had “hurt the feelings of the Chinese people” and “undermined the political basis for ties between China and Japan.”5 To the Japanese, the issue behind whether their prime minister should visit the Yasukuni Shrine was not whether Japan was guilty of crimes during World War II, for the Japanese public accepted that. Rather, as Koizumi told Professor Gerald Curtis, it was that no one, Japanese or foreign, could tell him that he should not pay respect to the Japanese soldiers who had sacrificed their lives for their country. His insistence on visiting the Yasukuni Shrine was popular with the Japanese public. But to the Chinese, Koizumi’s visits to the Yasukuni Shrine symbolized what they saw as a Japanese respect for militarists, the Japanese people’s unwillingness to face their history, and an unacceptable refusal to respect Chinese requests, especially at a time when China was ascendant and its economy was beginning to pass Japan’s. Within Japan, some officials and newspapers were critical of Koizumi for causing tensions with the Chinese and Koreans due to his visits to the Yasukuni Shrine but within Japan he remained popular. While Koizumi was in office, from 2001 to 2006, Sino-Japanese relations reached a new postwar low. President Hu Jintao’s Efforts to Improve Relations, 2003 In China, Hu Jintao, who had become president in 2003, made an effort to improve relations with Japan. In the 1980s he had been one of the Chinese youth welcoming a delegation of 3,000 young people from Japan, and he had maintained contact with some of the Japanese he had met. He did not publicly say that China should improve relations with Japan, but he allowed books and newspaper articles to be published that were more sympathetic to Japan than the prevailing Chinese mood. In April 2002, even before Hu took office, the Chinese General Administration of Press and Publications gave permission for the publication of a The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 . 381 . book by Pei Hua titled ZhongRi waijiao fengyunzhong de Deng Xiaoping (Deng Xiaoping amid changing Sino-Japanese relations), which, by presenting an accurate account of Deng Xiaoping’s trip to Japan in October 1978, was sympathetic to the Japanese who had received him. Also in 2002, Ma Licheng, a senior writer for People’s Daily, who had earlier worked at China Youth Daily, was dispatched to Japan for more than a month, assigned to write a report on what he observed in Japan. His article, “New Thinking on Relations with Japan,” appeared at the end of the year in the Chinese journal Zhanlüe yu guanli (Strategy and management), a publication with high-level sponsorship that was noted for fresh thinking on strategic issues. Ma reported that, contrary to conventional Chinese views, in conversations with Japanese people from many dif­ferent circles, they all said they opposed militarization and they all wanted to pursue peace. He also noted that in 1980, 78 percent of Japanese people said they had favorable impressions of China, but by 2000 the percentage had dropped to 49 percent. Nevertheless, Japanese people from all circles still wanted to have friendly relations with China. In 2003 Zhanlüe yu guanli published an article by Shi Yinhong, a strategist with a military background who was also a professor at People’s University, that asserted that better Sino-Japanese relations were in China’s interest and that China should support Japan in its bid to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council. For several months following these publications, it appeared as if Sino-Japanese relations might improve. China also undertook the production of a television series in 2003 on the rise and decline of the great powers. It was a thoughtful, well-researched effort to provide guidance to the public as China was on its way to becoming a great power. The series was aired on Chinese television in 2006. The series presented a balanced and respectful treatment of other countries, including Japan. To be sure, the section on Japan talked of World War II and Japanese aggression, but it also discussed how Japanese industrialization had created better living conditions for its people. The views on Japan published by Ma Licheng and Shi Yinhong were available in the Chinese media for several years, but they never became part of the mainstream. After 2003 their writings attracted less attention and in 2004, when passions between China and Japan again heated up, some even referred to Ma and Shi as traitors. Ma Licheng never gave up his views, but china and japan . 382 . finding it difficult to work in the mainland, he later moved to Hong Kong; Shi Yinhong, less bold in his praise of Japan, remained a professor at People’s University. Chinese Reaction to Japan’s Soccer Victories, 2004 At the time when the UN was beginning to discuss whether to expand the permanent membership of the UN Security Council, the Japanese national soccer team visited various Chinese cities ahead of the 2004 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Asian Cup, scheduled to be held in Beijing in August, to play the first round of the games. In each city, the Japanese team won the matches, and passionate demonstrations erupted against the Japanese. In the Asian Cup final in Beijing, Japan’s victory over China, 3–1, led to boisterous attacks against Japanese people and Japanese products. Chinese police escorted the Japanese team to safety, but the angry crowds continued to demonstrate, jostling the car of a Japanese diplomat and breaking its window. Similar demonstrations took place in several other cities, and scenes of the angry crowds were played and replayed on Japanese television. Emotional expressions of animosity and nationalism in both countries reached a high pitch. Before the emotions died down, the issue of Japan’s place in the UN came to a head. China Blocks Japan in the UN Security Council, 2005 In March 2005, during discussions concerning the upcoming decision on the future permanent membership of the UN Security Council, Secretary General Kofi Annan said that he supported Japan’s membership, and it appeared that Japan had the support of more than the two-thirds majority of UN members required for approval. The decision also required the support of all existing permanent members of the Security Council, so China, which had become a permanent member when the UN was first formed immediately after World War II, had the power to prevent Japan from becoming a permanent member. To cast the sole negative vote against Japan would have made China appear vindictive at a time when it was seeking to improve its international stature as a rising power. Chinese diplomats encouraged officials in the Southeast Asian countries, which had also suf- The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 . 383 . fered from Japanese aggression during the war, to oppose Japan’s membership as well. On April 12, China’s premier Wen Jiabao, in registering his opposition to Japan’s permanent membership on the UN Security Council, said that only a country that respects history can assume responsibility in the international community. To patriotic Chinese familiar with their history, it was a wonderful reversal of the events of 1920, when Japan became a permanent member of the League of Nations Council and China had to compete to be elected as a nonpermanent member, and of the period prior to 1971, when Japan supported the United States in preventing mainland China from replacing Taiwan in the UN’s China seat. Anti-Japanese demonstrations in China in the spring and summer of 2005 were intended to convey to the world that Japan did not deserve the permanent seat on the Security Council because of its failure to deal properly with its history. In April 2005 China carried out a nationwide online effort to collect signatures from those opposed to granting Japan a permanent seat on the council. In her research, Western scholar Jessica Weiss found evidence of anti-Japanese demonstrations in thirty-eight Chinese cities; in many of the demonstrations Japanese property was damaged. The government, in backing the protests, bused more than 10,000 students to central Beijing to engage in the demonstrations there. Demonstrators broke the windows of Japanese restaurants and shops that sold Japanese goods, smashed Japanese cars, and tore down signs advertising Japanese products. On April 9, crowds threw rocks and tiles at the residence of the Japanese ambassador, breaking windows and terrifying Ambassador Anami Koreshige and his wife, Ginny. Police prevented the demonstrators from scaling the fence to enter the ambassador’s property, but for hours they did nothing to stop the demonstrators from throwing rocks. The worst violence occurred in Shanghai, where tens of thousands demonstrated, many Japanese shop windows were broken, and the Japanese consulate was attacked. Chinese officials expressed admiration for the patriotism of Chinese students during the demonstrations, although they then tried to dampen the protests by warning the students against taking illegal actions. After it became clear that Japan would not be admitted as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the demonstrations died down. Japanese diplomats felt betrayed by China. Japan had supported China’s entry into the WTO and other world organizations, and yet Chinese officials china and japan . 384 . had stirred up popular anti-Japanese sentiment among the Chinese public and in Southeast Asia to block Japan, the second-largest economy in the world and the world’s second-highest contributor to the UN, from becoming a permanent member of the Security Council. In December 2005, following the demonstrations in China, a Yomiuri poll showed that 72 percent of Japanese respondents did not trust China. Japanese public opinion did not regain the level of positive feelings toward China that had been expressed before the attacks and China’s opposition to making Japan a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Easing Tensions and Olympic Diplomacy, 2006–2008 Following the demonstrations and destruction of Japanese property in China in 2005, leaders on both sides tried to ease the tensions. None of the several Japanese prime ministers who succeeded Koizumi visited the Yasukuni Shrine while in office, and Chinese officials urged anti-Japanese demonstrators to display restraint. Japan had become China’s largest trading partner in 2005 despite the attacks on the Japanese soccer team, and it has remained one of its top three trading partners since then. In 2005, Japaneseowned firms in China, mostly in manufacturing, employed an estimated 10 million Chinese workers. Chinese leaders, after the impasse with Prime Minister Koizumi over the visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, made efforts to improve relations with Koizumi’s successor, Abe Shinzo (who served his first term from September 2006 to September 2007), even though Abe did not promise not to visit the Yasukuni Shrine while he was prime minister. Ordinarily, a newly installed Japanese prime minister would make his first foreign visit to the United States, but on October 8, 2006, only two weeks after becoming prime minister, Abe Shinzo was welcomed in Beijing for a summit meeting. At the meeting Abe apologized to the Chinese for the enormous damage and pain that Japan had caused China during the Sino-Japanese War. President Hu Jintao, aware that Chinese pressure on Japanese leaders not to visit the Yasukuni Shrine had led to a deadlock in relations, avoided publicly pressing Abe on the issue, and Abe chose not to visit the shrine. Hu and Abe agreed to set up a panel of experts, with representatives from both sides, to undertake a joint The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 . 385 . study on the history problem, a project that was led by Bu Ping and Kitaoka Shinichi. As the time approached for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Chinese leaders sought to ensure the full cooperation of all countries, including Japan. Abe’s successor as prime minister, Fukuda Yasuo, whose father, Prime Minister Fukuda Takeo, had welcomed Deng Xiaoping to Japan in October 1978, also sought good relations with China. In May 2008, two months before the Beijing Olympics, Fukuda welcomed President Hu Jintao to Tokyo. It was the first visit to Japan by a Chinese president since President Jiang Zemin had visited in 1998. Like Jiang, President Hu also met with the Japanese emperor. During the visit the two sides began laying plans to cooperate in a joint natural-gas development project in the East China Sea. While Fukuda and Hu were working to improve relations in 2008, an issue arose that negatively affected the Japanese public’s view of China. The Japanese press reported that several hundred Japanese consumers had suffered severe nausea because of food poisoning after eating Chinese dumplings that had been sold to Japan. It was found that an insecticide had been mixed into dumplings produced by the Tianyang Food Processing Company in Hebei. When the Japanese complained, the Chinese initially played down the incident, saying that since no one had died there was no problem. The Japanese were disturbed by the failure of Chinese officials to take responsibility; explaining that they were acting for reasons of health safety, Japanese officials took several Chinese food products off the market. After some months, just before the Olympics, Chinese officials accepted responsibility, stopped the production of the dumplings, and recalled all dumpling exports. Eager for cooperation in preparing for the Olympics, the Chinese allowed the Japanese to send in rescue teams in response to the devastating earthquake that struck Wenchuan, in Sichuan province, on May 12, 2008, causing an estimated 69,000 deaths. Japan rushed in 61 workers to offer assistance, and next to Pakistan, it was the largest donor of funds for the victims. The quick dispatch of assistance was welcomed. Although the Chinese did not publicly recognize the Japanese when rescue efforts were ended, they did give positive publicity to Japan for its contributions to aid earthquake survivors. Diet member Nikai Toshihiro, head of the assistance china and japan . 386 . delegation, played a key role in leading other delegations to China to take part in preparations for the Olympics. Prime Minister Fukuda personally represented Japan at the opening ceremony of the Olympics, and Japan’s participation in the Beijing Olympic Games, held August 8–24, 2008, went smoothly. Fukuda was later appointed chairman of the Boao Forum for Asia, China’s version of the Davos World Economic Forum, and since then Fukuda has held more meetings with senior Chinese leaders than any other high-level Japanese official. The Nadir of Sino-Japanese Relations, 2010–2014 When Hatoyama Yukio of the Democratic Party of Japan became prime minister in September 2009, he announced that he wanted to move away from the Liberal Democratic Party’s policy of depending on the United States, make Asia the center of his policy, and develop better relations with China. Like Abe, he visited China before he visited the United States, and during his visit he offered a sincere personal apology for Japan’s wartime behavior. Later, when he was no longer prime minister, he visited the Memorial Hall of the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre to express sorrow for the atrocities caused by Japanese soldiers. Although the Japanese government had insisted that there was no dispute concerning Japan’s sovereignty over the Senkaku /Diaoyu Islands, Hatoyama Yukio said there was a dispute and that it had been caused by Japan rather than China. After less than nine months as prime minister, Hatoyama was replaced by the Democratic Party’s Kan Naoto, who also sought to promote good relations with China. For years, Kan had been inviting Chinese students in Japan to his home for friendly visits. Yet despite the stated willingness of the Democratic Party to maintain good relations with China and to take China’s side in some key disputes, relations between the two countries reached their nadir in 2010 and 2012 while the party was in power. Collision at Sea near the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, 2010 Within weeks of the World Bank’s announcement that the size of China’s economy had passed Japan’s, an incident occurred that led to a clash between the two countries. The incident was unplanned, and it was not resolved The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 . 387 . smoothly by officials on the spot, leading to a test of wills at the higher levels of government. As each side tried to force the other side to yield, the raw emotions of an aroused public came to the fore in both countries. Ultimately, China escalated the pressures it brought to bear beyond what was routine to resolve such issues, and Japan yielded. The confrontation ended within three weeks, but the passions it generated brought relations between the two countries to a new low. On September 7, 2010, a Japanese Coast Guard patrol boat noticed that a Chinese fishing trawler, the Minjinyu 5179, was seven and a half miles northeast of the disputed Diaoyu /Senkaku Islands and within the territorial waters administered by Japan. After Japan had taken over administrative control of the islands in 1972, the two countries had reached an understanding that, to avoid incidents, Chinese ships would not enter Japan’s territorial waters near the islands. If they were to enter by accident and a Japanese patrol boat asked them to leave, it was agreed that they would do so immediately. In this case, when the patrol boat demanded that the Chinese trawler leave Japan’s territorial waters, the trawler did not move. The Japanese Coast Guard boat then demanded that Japanese officials be allowed to board the Chinese trawler to inspect it. The trawler tried to escape, but several Japanese patrol boats, much larger and faster than the trawler, encircled the fishing boat and cut off its exit. The captain of the trawler, Zhan Qixiong, rammed against the side of a patrol boat and then, in trying to escape, ran into the side of another patrol boat. Thereafter, Japanese Coast Guard officials boarded the Chinese trawler and took the captain and the crew. It was later determined that the trawler’s presence in the area had not been approved by Chinese officials and, in addition, the trawler captain was drunk. On the rare occasions when Japanese Coast Guard officials had picked up Chinese crew members near the Diaoyu / Senkaku Islands, they had quickly returned them to China. This time, however, since the Chinese captain had damaged a Japanese boat, the Japanese explained that it was necessary to try the captain in a Japanese court. This news was quickly relayed to Beijing, where Chinese officials called in the Japanese ambassador, Niwa Uichiro, at 3:00 a.m. and demanded that the crew and the trawler be handed over to China immediately. Japan did not yield, and the day after the incident, the Chinese began carrying out demonstrations in front of the Japanese china and japan . 388 . embassy in Beijing, the Japanese consulate in Shanghai, and some Japanese businesses. Chinese officials continued to demand that the Japanese promptly return the captain and the crew. On September 12, five days after the incident, State Councilor Dai Bingguo again called in Ambassador Niwa in Beijing and told him, “Make a wise political decision and release the Chinese fishermen and trawler immediately.” On the next day, fearing further escalation, Japan handed over the crew members and the trawler, but the captain remained in Japan because he had caused damage to Japanese property and was being held for a hearing in a Japanese domestic court. On September 20, four Japanese construction company employees who had been dispatched to China to remove some of the chemical weapons placed there by Japanese forces during World War II were arrested in Beijing for filming military targets. Demonstrations against the Japanese broke out in various Chinese cities, and many Japanese citizens in China reported that they felt that their lives were in danger. China, which then controlled 97 percent of the world’s sources of rare earths, chemical elements necessary for the electronics industry, restricted the export of rare earths to Japan. Japanese electronics companies immediately began discussions with other countries to expand the mining and production of rare-earth metals elsewhere. Chinese officials encouraged Chinese citizens who had been planning to travel to Japan to cancel their trips. On September 19, China announced that all high-level exchanges with Japan would be frozen. On September 22, Premier Wen Jiabao, while in New York attending UN meetings, announced, “I strongly urge Japan to release the ship captain, Zhan Qixiong, immediately and unconditionally.” Wen Jiabao stated that China was prepared to take further measures and that Japan would bear “all responsibility for the consequences.” Japan’s leaders considered the Chinese response excessive, but they wanted to avoid further escalation of the situation. Two days later Japanese officials, acknowledging that the tense situation was hurting Sino-Japanese relations, released Zhan Qixiong to the Chinese without demanding that he stand trial. In the weeks following the incident, the Chinese and Japanese media were filled with reports of the incident and its outcome. The confrontation increased hostile feelings between Chinese and Japanese officials, as well as between the general populations of the two countries. The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 . 389 . The trawler incident occurred just as Ozawa Ichiro was challenging Japan’s new prime minister, Kan Naoto, to become head of the Democratic Party, and Japanese political leaders who otherwise might have devoted time to resolving the conflict with China were preoccupied with domestic politics. During the previous decades of LDP-controlled government, when tensions arose between China and Japan, experienced senior China specialists in Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in cooperation with LDP politicians and through established channels of communication with their Chinese counterparts, had often been able to keep such incidents under control. This time, however, communications between Chinese and Japanese diplomats broke down. After Zhan Qixiong was returned to China, LDP supporters used the occasion to criticize the inexperienced Democratic Party for its mismanagement of the incident. They criticized the Democratic Party for initially being so firm about holding the crew and insisting that the captain face trial and then caving in completely to China’s demands. When Zhan Qixiong was returned to China, he was at first given a hero’s welcome. Although there was no public acknowledgment that he had been drunk at the time of the incident, several weeks after his return to China he was unceremoniously sent to the countryside. After the trawler incident, the Chinese media were filled with more strident anti-Japanese content than usual. The Chinese government increased its patrols in the waters near the Diaoyu /Senkaku Islands, the Japanese government expanded its efforts to defend the Senkaku /Diaoyu Islands, and the U.S. government reaffirmed its commitment to defend Japan if it were to be attacked in territory under Japanese administration. Between September 2008, before the confrontation over the trawler, and August 2012, China sent several ships into the twelve-nautical-mile territorial zone. Beginning in September 2012 China began sending more than twelve ships each month into the twelve-nautical-mile zone. Although China began decreasing the number of ships sent to this zone in August 2013, it still sent ships to the area each month.6 Tensions between the two countries eased slightly following the Tohoku earthquake of March 11, 2011. Just as Japan in 2008 had sent aid to China after the Sichuan earthquake, after the Tohoku earthquake, the Chinese promptly sent aid to Japan. In September 2011, when Noda Yoshihiko china and japan . 390 . became prime minister, he quickly arranged for a two-day visit to Beijing, during which time he expressed his appreciation for China’s assistance after the earthquake. But relations between China and Japan remained far more tense than they had been prior to the trawler incident. Japan’s “Nationalization” of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, 2012 Within Japan, the person who ignited the fuse that blew up Sino-Japanese relations in 2012 was a popular, macho writer-turned-politician, Ishihara Shintaro. Ishihara had become a cult figure in 1956 when, as a writer and playwright, he and his brother Yujiro made a famous movie in which they became symbols of a new and assertive young generation. Because Ishihara already had a huge popular following, when he became a politician and was elected governor of Tokyo, he always attracted more attention than other politicians. Aware of Ishihara’s vast popularity, other politicians hesitated to criticize him publicly. When the United States was at the peak of its power, Ishihara proclaimed that Japan could say “no” to the United States. In 2010, when the Chinese economy was passing Japan’s in size, Ishihara proclaimed that Japan could also say “no” to China. When Ishihara lambasted Democratic Party leaders for their feeble response to China’s pressure to release the trawler captain, his views struck a responsive chord among the Japanese public. Since World War II the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands had been uninhabited, and three of the islands were officially owned by Kurihara Hiroyuki, whose relatives had once used the islands in their business of preparing dried bonito flakes (katsuobushi) for the market. In April 2012, in a talk at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., Ishihara announced his intention to raise money to buy the Kurihara’s three islands and build structures on them. Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko of the Democratic Party, aware that Ishihara’s purchase of the islands would infuriate the Chinese and fearful of how Ishihara might use his possession of the islands, decided it would be better for the Japanese government to buy the islands than to run the risk of problems with China if they were in Ishihara’s hands. Noda was more pragmatic than his two Democratic Party predecessors, Hatoyama Yukio and Kan Naoto, but he did not want to appear weak in the face of China’s The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 . 391 . requests. He vastly underestimated China’s determination to assert that it was the dominant power in the region. On July 7, 2012, with limited consultations with other Japanese leaders, Noda decided that the government would buy the islands from the Kurihara family for $25 million, but he wanted to keep his plan secret and then have discussions with the Chinese, hoping this would avoid an escalation of tensions. The next day, however, the Asahi newspaper revealed his plan under the headline: “Nationalization.” The Chinese were, as Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs had predicted, furious and they strongly opposed Japan’s “nationalization” of the islands. The issue became a test of political will at a time when China’s leaders had gained confidence that they were the dominant country in East Asia. In many Chinese cities, street demonstrations broke out in which Japanese-owned shops and factories were attacked, causing damages totaling $100 million, according to Japanese estimates. Up until this point the Chinese had sent only Chinese Coast Guard ships into the waters near the islands, but on September 14, three days after the Japanese government purchased the three islands, China began sailing government patrol ships near the disputed islands, some even within the twelve-nautical-mile zone that Japan administered. With these actions, the Chinese government made it clear to Japan that it was prepared to go to great lengths to show that it was the dominant power in Asia, and that the Japanese would be in trouble if they did not follow China’s requests. Not until a year later, in October 2013, did relations between China and Japan in the area of the islands began to stabilize. Until that time, China was sending as many as four patrols a week to the islands’ territorial waters. Thereafter, it sent only one patrol every several weeks, thus reducing the chance of an incident. The Japanese also worked to avoid any escalation of the dispute by not building on the islands. To the Japanese, the Chinese reaction to their purchase of the three islands seemed excessive, but by 2012 it was clear to Japan’s leaders that China’s military and economic power had surpassed Japan’s and they had no choice but to accept that reality. However, as in earlier centuries, Japan was determined not to bow down. For many of the Chinese who had grudgingly recognized since 1895 that Japan was stronger and more modern, China had returned to its proper china and japan . 392 . place in the world and in its relationship with Japan. Now, with a stronger military and a larger economy, as well as the legacy of a great ancient civilization, China could again look down on Japan. But Chinese leaders did not yet have the relaxed confidence that the United States enjoyed between 1945 and 2008 as the world’s unquestioned leading power. To them, the demand that Japan must recognize its history meant not only that it must acknowledge past cruelties but also that it must recognize that China had become the leading nation in Asia. At the same time, many Japanese remained determined, as Empress Suiko was in 607, that while Japan would acknowledge the greatness of China, China should treat Japan with respect. Xi Jinping, Abe Shinzo, and the Stabilization of Relations After the rapid changes of prime ministers in Japan between 1994 and 2012, the long, stable relationship between Abe Shinzo, who was elected again in 2012 (currently serving until 2021) and China’s Xi Jinping (president from 2012 until at least 2022) has enabled the two leaders, after firming up their respective political bases, to move slowly and steadily toward stabilizing the relationship between China and Japan. When Abe Shinzo first served as prime minister from 2006 to 2007, both Chinese and Japanese leaders wanted to improve relations following the standoff from the Koizumi era, and Abe’s relations with Hu Jintao’s China went relatively smoothly. But Abe had a conservative political base and he had enjoyed good relations with his grandfather, Kishi Nobusuke, who had been accused of being a class-A war criminal for his role in guiding the economy during World War II. Abe wanted to change Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution to allow Japan to become a normal country with regular armed forces (instead of only “self-defense forces”). In December 2013, a year after he returned to office, Abe displayed his conservative credentials by visiting the Yasukuni Shrine. Not only Chinese but also Koreans and Westerners criticized him for this. Abe was proud and patriotic, but after he made his political statement by visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, he chose to be pragmatic. While in office, he did not again visit the Yasukuni Shrine. After the years of political instability from 1994 to 2012, the Japanese public longed for a prime minister who could provide steady leadership. During his first year after returning to the position of prime minister in The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 . 393 . 2012, Abe introduced the economic policy known as “Abenomics,” which provided a short-term stimulus for the economy and boosted his popularity. His chief cabinet secretary, Suga Yoshihide, proved skillful in working with other political leaders to manage Abe’s agenda. Abe continued to support the defense alliance with the United States, but he avoided being provocative to China. Abe managed to maintain support and to win a third term, which allows him to remain in office until 2021, the year after Tokyo is scheduled to host the Olympics. Abe came to office within months of the 2012 confrontations over Japan’s purchase of three of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. China’s ships and planes continued to put pressure on Japan in the area. Japan had already established an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), which required any airplane flying over the islands to give Japan prior notification, and in 2013 China announced it was establishing its own ADIZ over the islands. Four Japanese airline companies initially made their planes comply, but later, when the Japanese government told them not to notify China, they ceased notification. Continuing Economic Relations Just as trade between China and Japan continued during the Qing and Tokugawa periods, when political relations between the two countries were lacking, so trade between China and Japan continued after 1992 despite political problems. In fact, in 2004 when relations between China and Japan were very tense, China’s trade with Japan surpassed its trade with the United States. Although the Japanese worried when the size of China’s economy eclipsed Japan’s, in many ways Japan is fortunate to be located next to the world’s most populous country, particularly now that Chinese per capita incomes have risen to middle-class levels. For 150 years it has been the dream of Japanese business leaders to access the Chinese market. Late in the nineteenth century, the Chinese were so poor that only a few could afford the products that Japan then offered—silk, cotton cloth, laver (a seaweed), and dried squid. Today the Chinese population is ten times that of Japan, and for Japanese companies it means a market of 1.4 billion consumers with increasingly sophisticated taste and considerable disposable income. china and japan . 394 . For many Japanese companies, the sales and profits from operations outside of Japan are larger than those from their domestic business. Japan’s annual repatriation of profits from overseas investments has increased five times since 2000, and by 2014 they amounted to about $200 billion per year. During recent decades, when domestic GDP was growing at 1 percent or less, Japan’s overseas operations were growing at an annual rate of 5 percent or more. Japan’s balance of trade with China has generally been positive, in stark contrast to the U.S. balance of trade with China. Japanese investment in China began to grow in the mid-1990s as Chinese economic growth sped up, and it increased again after China joined the WTO in 2001. The amount of new investment declined slightly after 2010, but trade began to grow again in 2014. More companies from Japan have been conducting business in China than companies from any other country. In October 2016, for example, some 32,300 Japanese firms were operating in China. The United States was second, with some 8,400 firms. Japanese firms have adapted to the changing opportunities in China, moving from producing light industrial goods with low technology to producing heavy industrial goods and goods with higher technology. By the twenty-first century, as Chinese family incomes had risen, Japan increased its sales of consumer goods in China and expanded its investments in the service sector. Between 2006 and 2014, for example, the proportion of Japanese investments in China in the service sector grew from 24 percent to 39 percent. Japanese companies that invested in China in the 1980s generally took a long-term perspective. As the Chinese economy grew, the Chinese became skilled at using the prospects of its huge market to insist that foreign companies build factories in China and pass on their latest technology. Yet Japanese companies, unlike many Western companies that passed on their latest technology to gain short-term profits, were generally more cautious about sharing their newest technology in their factories in China. They were aware that Chinese employees of foreign companies who became familiar with foreign technology and management would often leave to form their own companies, taking with them the technological knowledge they had gained from their former employer. Japanese companies, in contrast, have been more likely to provide their Chinese employees with long-term incentives, such as supplying housing that employees gradually acquire as their own over many years with the company. They have also integrated their pro- The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 . 395 . duction in China with Chinese companies and sourced high-technology components in Japan, so that it is not easy for Chinese companies to break off from their Japanese partners. Despite the political tensions, Japan’s largest trading companies have administrative offices throughout China that have become as large or larger than their offices in the United States. The largest Japanese trading company in the Chinese market, Itochu, has offices in fourteen cities. Other major trading companies in China—Mitsubishi, Mitsui, and Sumitomo— have offices in all major Chinese cities, with local staff under the leadership of Japanese officials who have learned Mandarin and, in some cases, even local Chinese dialects. They have learned about local politics and markets and have made connections with local officials to learn how to operate in the Chinese environment. By linking up with the large Japanese trading companies in China, small Japanese companies can gain information about the Chinese market and make local connections that are needed to conduct business. Japanese firms generally keep a low profile in China to avoid antiJapanese outbursts, and they tend to pay their Chinese employees slightly more than Chinese or Western firms do to compensate for anti-Japanese sentiments. They have continued to benefit from the good reputation of Japanese products, even during periods of anti-Japanese demonstrations when Chinese protesters have boycotted Japanese firms and damaged Japanese property. All these efforts have helped Japanese companies remain in China even during periods of heightened political tensions. Effective working relationships between Japanese and Chinese businesses have provided ballast for the relationship. At the same time, many Japanese firms have found ways to reduce the risks of depending entirely on their production in China by diversifying their investments to work with other Asian countries. After the 2005 attacks on Japanese goods, a popular expression among Japanese industrialists investing in China was “China plus one.” A Japanese company that built a factory in China also built a factory elsewhere, so that if the factory in China were to encounter trouble due to nationalist outbreaks, the company could quickly expand operations elsewhere to meet its production goals. In the years after 2010 the Japanese increased their new investments in industrial plants in Southeast Asia and India more than their new investments in China, both china and japan . 396 . because of concern about boycotts and attacks on Japanese property and because of rising Chinese labor costs. But the Japanese have found ways to deal with risk while remaining active in the Chinese market. Business leaders in Japanese headquarters consider it an important part of their responsibility to maintain good working relations with Chinese officials, in Beijing and in the regions. When Diet member Nikai Toshihiro, a former economic bureaucrat and former chief cabinet secretary, travels to Beijing, for example, he often takes with him several hundred people with business interests in China. When Prime Minister Abe visited China in October 2018, he was accompanied by more than 500 Japanese businesspeople with interests in China. Since there are direct flights from Tokyo or Osaka to several large Chinese cities, it is now possible for a Japanese businessperson to fly to China in the morning, have one or two meetings, and return the same evening. Despite government tensions, a program initiated by Deng Xiaoping and Nakasone Yasuhiro in 1983 that enables local Chinese governments to request retired Japanese technical workers (over the age of sixty) to come to China to work in their locality has continued without interruption. By 2018, some 4,700 retired Japanese technicians had been employed by local governments in China, and they have been much appreciated for bringing in new technology. The Easing of Tensions since 2014 In June 2014 Fukuda Yasuo, who had been head of China’s Boao Forum after retiring as prime minister in 2008, traveled to Beijing, where he met with President Xi Jinping and China’s leading diplomats, Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi. During his visit, he and his Chinese hosts worked out a four-point mechanism for reducing the risk that an accident near the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands might lead to a broader conflict. Fukuda and Xi also laid the foundation for a meeting between Abe and Xi in November 2014. Since Fukuda’s visit, there has been a very slow but steady improvement in relations. For two years after Abe returned to the post of prime minister in 2012, China refused Japan’s requests for a meeting between Abe and Xi Jinping, but it would have been awkward for them not to meet when Abe attended The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 . 397 . a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in Beijing in November 2014. They did meet at the APEC conference, and when the two leaders posed for photographs after their twenty-minute conversation, they each pouted to show their respective home audiences that they had not been too soft on the other country. Aides on the two sides reported, however, that the two leaders were in fact quite cordial during their brief meeting. During his seventeen years working in Fujian, Xi Jinping had often met with Japanese visitors, and the Japanese who spoke with him reported that Xi was businesslike and not personally anti-Japanese. In April 2015, to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the Bandung Conference of Non-Aligned Nations, at which Zhou Enlai played a major role, Abe and Xi met for half an hour and discussed again how the two countries might cooperate to reduce tensions. For the public, they posed displaying cordial smiles, reflecting progress in the relationship but not so much progress as to disturb the left-wing Chinese and right-wing Japanese. Although high-level Japanese and Chinese political leaders rarely meet, diplomats have met slightly more often. The Chinese have generally assigned as ambassador to Tokyo highly skilled Japanese-language specialists, such as Tang Jiaxuan or Wang Yi, but aside from their diplomatic assignments, they had not lived in Japan. Their Japanese counterparts report that Chinese diplomats sometimes criticize Japan severely, using set phrases, behavior that makes it difficult to sustain friendships with them. However, Cheng Yonghua, who became China’s ambassador to Japan in 2010, had gone to Japan in 1975 to attend Soka University (under the Buddhist sect Soka Gakkai), where he had a chance to develop personal relationships with the Japanese before he entered the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1977. As in earlier centuries, the Buddhist connection provided a basis of trust that underpinned business relations between the two countries. Cheng’s wife, who received her Ph.D. from Tokyo University, also has Japanese acquaintances from outside diplomatic channels. Cheng has maintained good working relationships with the Japanese and has been allowed by leaders in Beijing to remain as ambassador for a much longer term than usual. In 2012 Japan appointed a professional diplomat, Nishimiya Shinichi, a China and U.S. specialist, to replace Ambassador Niwa Uichiro, who was not a China specialist but a former president of Itochu, the most successful china and japan . 398 . Japanese trading company in China. Nishimiya died suddenly before taking up his position. Given the troubled state of Sino-Japanese relations, Japan then chose to send a very senior diplomat, Kitera Masato, a French specialist, to be ambassador in Beijing. During his three and a half years as ambassador, Kitera met Foreign Minister Wang Yi once, and in that meeting in 2013, Wang Yi complained about Abe’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine.7 When he met with other officials in China, Kitera was presented with carefully worded criticisms of Japan’s behavior. Japanese officials were prepared to have more frequent and productive interactions, but China limited the contacts. In March 2016, Abe named as ambassador to Beijing an experienced China specialist, Yokoi Yutaka, who had served as head of the China section in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, head of the political section in Japan’s embassy in Beijing, consul general in Shanghai, and ambassador to Turkey. His contacts with his Chinese counterparts in Beijing developed slowly but steadily. Although Japanese visitors to China leveled off after the tensions in 2010, the number of Chinese visitors to Japan has grown rapidly since 2013. By 2013, the rise in the Chinese standard of living and the decline in the value of the yen enabled more Chinese tourists to travel outside the country. According to Japanese government figures, the number of visas granted to Chinese travelers to Japan has undergone a striking increase, as shown in the table. number of chinese visitors to japan 2012 1,425,100 2013 2,210,821 2014 2,409,158 2015 4,993,689 2016 6,372,948 2017 7,350,000 2018 8,380,000 Because Japanese products have a good reputation in China, Chinese tourists buy electronic goods, appliances, hi-tech toilet seats, baby formula, and other Japanese products when they visit Japan. Japanese hotels and stores in key tourist cities in Japan have hired Chinese employees who have The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 . 399 . studied in Japan to help them meet the needs of their Chinese customers. Even large shopping malls in Japan cater to Chinese tourists and have introduced Chinese-language signs. Some have more signs in Chinese than in English. Given the very negative publicity in China about the Japanese, many first-time tourists have been surprised at how much they have enjoyed Japan. When Chinese tourists began going to Japan in large numbers, they generally traveled in tour groups, but gradually families started visiting Japan on their own. Chinese tourists typically first traveled to the well-known tourist sites in Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka. But on later trips some tourists began visiting various spots in Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Shikoku, and scenic places elsewhere in the country. Just as boorish American tourists in Europe and parts of Asia in the 1950s were known as “ugly Americans” and Japanese tourists going to Southeast Asia in the 1970s were often known as “ugly Japanese,” so some of the first groups of nouveau riche tourists from China who traveled abroad were dubbed the “ugly Chinese” for being noisy, careless about property in hotel rooms, and rude to people around them. However, like experienced American and Japanese travelers, Chinese tourists have begun reading guidebooks to learn about expected behavior in other countries, and Japanese complaints about them have declined. The educated middle-class tourists who have traveled to Japan find that the Japanese people they see and meet personally are courteous, very dif­ferent from the cruel soldiers depicted in World War II movies. Chinese visitors generally return from Japan convinced that Japan is an orderly and clean country, with little environmental pollution. In questionnaires about whether travelers would like to revisit the country they traveled to, a higher percentage of Chinese tourists report wanting to revisit Japan than any other foreign country. Chinese leaders welcomed the pragmatic attitudes of the Abe administration and its care in avoiding provocative statements against China. Chinese publicity attacking Japan began to decrease. In 2012 fewer than 10 percent of the Chinese surveyed reported having positive impressions of Japan, but surveys from 2017 showed that as many as 40 percent of the Chinese polled had developed positive feelings toward Japan. Japanese impressions of China have been changing much more slowly. The memories of China putting pressure on Japan in 2010 and 2012, of TV images of Japanese businesses in China being trashed by crowds of china and japan . 400 . protestors, of the buzzing of Japanese ships in the Senkaku/Diaoyu area, of the countless World War II movies showing heroic Chinese soldiers fighting Japanese enemies, and of anti-Japanese Chinese movies and propaganda in general, have been too strong and too recent for the Japanese to feel relaxed about how a strong China will behave. By 2017 the Chinese had begun to reduce the number of new World War II movies produced for Chinese TV and the numbers of Chinese airplanes flown and ships sailed close to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. It had also begun to cooperate with Japan in exchanging high-level officials. In May 2018, forty years after China and Japan began preparing for the Treaty of Peace and Friendship that they signed in 1978, Premier Li Keqiang visited Japan, where he met Emperor Akihito and had discussions with Prime Minister Abe on how to improve relations. To symbolize China’s receptivity to Japanese companies in China, Li Keqiang visited a Toyota factory in Hokkaido that made parts for Toyota’s factories in China. Japan and China agreed on further mechanisms for increasing communication. China made it clear that it welcomed Japan’s willingness to cooperate on projects in its Belt and Road Initiative, a plan to strengthen international cooperation and broaden links for infrastructure development, investment, and trade with countries on the Euro-Asian continent. Li Keqiang’s visit also reflected his recognition that Japan and China had common interests in responding to President Donald Trump’s trade pressures. In October 2018, Prime Minister Abe made the first visit to China by a Japanese prime minister since 2011, when relations between the two countries were far more tense. Prime Minister Abe and President Xi discussed measures for increasing communications between the two countries and possibilities for cooperation in projects in other countries. During Abe’s time in Beijing, October 25 to 27, China and Japan announced a $30 billion currency swap to promote greater stability of their two currencies. Abe said that the two nations could now move from competition to cooperation. By the time of the visit, it was amply clear that China was the dominant economic and military power. After Abe returned to Japan, diplomats from the two sides continued planning to bring Xi Jinping to Japan in 2019, for what would be Xi’s first visit to Japan since becoming China’s top leader in 2012. It is not expected that the meeting will end the standoff over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, where neither side is prepared to give up its The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 . 401 . claims, but it could stabilize the situation and further reduce the risk of conflict. As in earlier centuries, particularly in the latter half of the nineteenth century, competition between Japan and China over Korea has intensified again. Japanese efforts to develop a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system, involving cooperation with South Korea and the United States against threats from North Korea, have pulled South Korea toward Japan, but China’s publicity about Japan’s refusal to face history has exacerbated some cleavages between Korea and Japan that remain strong. Japan amid Heightened Sino-American Tensions, 2017 The Chinese economy appeared poised to begin surpassing the U.S. economy in overall size in 2017, just as it was poised in 1993 to begin the transition to dominance in Asia as the size of its economy was surpassing that of Japan. And just as relations between China and Japan became very tense during that earlier transition, so relations between China and the United States became more tense over the prospect that China’s hightechnology, military power, and international influence were beginning to challenge the dominance of the United States in those areas. The Japanese were in many ways better prepared for the transition to China’s gaining the dominant position than Americans are now. The Japanese had historical memories of how the Chinese had treated Japan when Chinese officials presided over a confident civilization that dominated Asia. The Japanese had deeper cultural contacts with the Chinese over the centuries, with an overlap in written language that enabled them to have broader and deeper communications than Americans have with China. Far more Japanese people had lived in China and learned how to work with the Chinese. The Japanese had long been accustomed to tensions with the Chinese, ever since the 1870s when they confronted each other in Korea. Furthermore, Japan had experienced far too many difficulties with China to share the naïve optimism displayed by some Americans in their dealings with China since President Nixon’s visit in 1972. The Japanese also have had a deeper understanding of China’s economic nationalism as it has tried to catch up with more modern industrial nations. To be sure, Japan’s and China’s paths in pursuing their own economic interests were dif­ferent. After World War II, Japan, which already had a strong china and japan . 402 . industrial base, tried to commercialize its military technology and prepare its infant industries for international market competition while creating nontariff barriers to make it difficult for foreign countries to establish industrial plants in Japan. In 1978, when China suddenly opened up, its industries were so far below international standards that it allowed foreign companies seeking access to its huge market to establish industrial plants in China if they shared their technology. China expected that as their industries caught up, Chinese companies would begin to take the place of the foreign companies. The Japanese were less surprised than the Americans and others when Chinese companies became strong and endeavored to reduce the foreign presence in China. Japanese companies, with deeper roots in local Chinese communities and a broader perspective, were better prepared because they were less interested in short-term profits, more cautious about sharing their most precious technology, and more heavily invested in longterm relationships with the Chinese. The Japanese cannot expect high levels of military cooperation between their two nations, but they can expand their discussions to further reduce the risk of conflict and extend their cooperation for responding to natural disasters and carrying out peacekeeping projects. The Japanese already have a rich network of relationships with the Chinese in all fields, and that network is likely to expand in the decades ahead. Yet faced with a strong China, the Japanese have every reason to maintain their ties to the United States, which have grown stronger and deeper in the seven decades since World War II. The Japanese have close relations with the United States in every sphere—military, political, economic, and cultural. There is a high level of comfort between the Americans and the Japanese, and an open exchange of ideas and opinions. Although some in China have an interest in expanding relations with Japan, it is not in China’s interest to detach Japan from the U.S.-Japan military alliance, for an independent Japan would develop a stronger military and possibly develop nuclear weapons to defend itself. The Chinese have not erased their image of the Japanese as a militaristic aggressive people, and they believe that the U.S.-Japan Alliance can still help keep the cork in the bottle. Japanese strategists are aware that the Chinese economy will soon be several times larger than their own, that China is putting far more resources into its military than Japan could match, and that Japan’s military manpower cannot com- The Deterioration of Sino-Japanese Relations, 1992–2018 . 403 . pare with that of China, which has ten times the population. The Japanese are therefore firmly committed to cooperation with the U.S. military. Though the Japanese are prepared to increase their cooperation with China, their relationship with the U.S. military and the U.S. government since 1945 has made the Japanese feel far more secure working with Americans than with an authoritarian Chinese government that has expressed so much hostility toward Japan. However, the reduced role of the United States in maintaining global order, the increased role of China in global affairs, and the stabilization of relations between China and Japan provide a new basis for increased cooperation between China and Japan in regional and global affairs. The Chinese and Japanese have already begun discussions about working together in the Mekong Delta, and they have begun cooperating on construction projects in the Belt and Road Initiative. Japan responded to U.S. pressures not to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), but it has begun cooperating with the AIIB for financing various projects in Asia. China and Japan have good channels for working with the AIIB because of Japan’s relations with the president of AIIB, Jin Liqun. A cosmopolitan internationalist, Jin was formerly vice president of the Japanese-led Asian Development Bank, and he has for many years enjoyed good relations with Japanese officials as well as officials from the United States and other countries. The nexus of relations between the Chinese and the Japanese, already strong, can be expected to expand in the decades ahead. Yet the history between their countries since the 1870s is so troubled on both sides that Japan’s relationship with China cannot undo the deep positive relations between the Japanese and the Americans that have developed since 1945. . 404 . chapter twelve Facing the New Era What is the nature of the new era that China and Japan face, now that China occupies the dominant position in the relationship? How might the two nations work together in the new era for the benefit of both nations and the rest of the world? Sino-Japanese Relations after 2014 Until the arrival of Western explorers, merchants, and missionaries, China and Japan were linked in a loose regional order dominated by Chinese civilization. But now the two countries are part of a global order, which, though highly imperfect, operates according to a far more complex structure of rules and procedures that were originally established by Western countries. Even as China surpasses the United States to become the world’s largest economy, it remains part of this global structure created by Westerners. As China gains influence and leverage around the world, it is beginning to take on a larger role within existing organizations. It is taking the lead to form new regional and global institutions that, despite being established by China, operate less in the way China has traditionally dealt with the outside and more like the institutions established under the leadership of the United States and other Western countries. Japan, which has been subordinate to the United States since the days of the Allied Occupation, remains a major global economic power and will continue working within the framework of the U.S.-Japan Security Alliance. But since the administration of Donald Trump, which is loosening its links to regional and global institutions, Japan is gaining more independence and beginning slowly to take more initiative in its global political role and in its relations with China. Facing the New Era . 405 . People in China and Japan now have far more contacts with each other than they had at any time in history. Due to the advances in industrial production and transportation that spread to China in the early decades after reform and opening began in 1978, the scale of goods and people exchanged between the two countries is more than a hundred times what it was in 1972, when they first reestablished formal diplomatic relations. More goods are exchanged, and more people travel between the two countries, in a single day now than in an entire decade during the centuries of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) and the Tokugawa period (1603–1868). Between World War II and 1972, trade between the two countries never reached $1 billion a year, but by 2017 the countries were trading $300 billion in goods per year.1 In 1965, the peak year for Japanese visitors to China before normalization, aside from some Japanese visitors to the Guangzhou trade fair, fewer than 5,000 Japanese travelers visited China during the entire year.2 In 2018, more than 8 million visas were issued to Chinese travelers going to Japan and more than 4 million visas were issued to Japanese individuals going to China. By 2018 an average of more than 20,000 Chinese visitors were arriving in Japan each day, and the number of tourists was continuing to grow. More than 30,000 Japanese companies now operate in China, far more than companies from any other country. Pragmatic Chinese officials in charge of local economic relations have been willing to work with the Japanese, despite public expressions of anti-Japanese sentiment. Japanese companies are also playing a role in supplying products to Chinese consumers through e-commerce. However, between the political leaders of Japan and China, the level of trust and empathy and the number of frank discussions is low compared with those between the leaders of other major nations, and the nature of their exchanges tends to be more formal. No high-level political leader on either side has close friendships with or deep knowledge about the people in the other country. Top leaders of the two nations occasionally have their own brief side meetings at gatherings of regional or international organizations, but long discussions between them have not taken place more than once every five years. By Chinese standards for welcoming foreign guests, Japanese officials are often not given honored treatment, and sometimes they are not received at all. china and japan . 406 . Until the Sino-Japanese War of 1895, most Chinese people living outside of the major east coast cities were hardly aware of Japan’s existence. Even during the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945, unlike those living near large cities or Japanese military camps, the 80 percent of the Chinese population living in rural areas without access to radio had little awareness of what Japanese soldiers were doing in China. Now, every day, virtually everyone in both Japan and China has access to electronic media presenting news or stories about the other country. In China, state media officials supervise the content of information presented to the public, and between 1992 and 2014, images of Japanese aggressors were widely available to Chinese viewers. Japan did not have an organized propaganda department as it did during World War II, but coverage of China in the Japanese media included televised pictures of Chinese protestors throwing stones at Japanese shops in China, and Chinese ships and planes harassing Japanese ships near the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. The result of such media coverage in both countries was a widespread, mutual public antagonism that peaked between 2010 and 2014. Yet as Chinese incomes began to rise, Chinese people acquired a high regard for Japanese industrial products. The extensive personal contacts and economic relations between China and Japan thus rest on a fragile foundation that is threatened by widespread popular hostility and the changeability of political leaders who lack trust in their counterparts in the other country. Since much of the passion in Sino-Japanese relations is deeply rooted in perceptions of history, it will be difficult for the two countries to place their relations on a more solid, stable base, unless they deal with the volatile emotions stemming from history. Concerns of Chinese Leaders and Their Use of History The concerns that Chinese leaders have about Japan are reflected in the issues they raise about history. The three most common issues raised by Chinese leaders are: visits by Japanese political leaders to the Yasukuni Shrine, Japan’s failure to acknowledge the horrors of the Nanjing Massacre, and the failure of Japanese textbooks to describe accurately the SinoJapanese War. What are the concerns underlying China’s focus on these issues? Facing the New Era . 407 . The Yasukuni Shrine Although many Japanese leaders have expressed goodwill toward China during the past 125 years, ultimately China suffered greatly from attacks by Japanese troops, not only from 1937 to 1945 but also during the SinoJapanese War of 1894–1895, the Ji’nan Incident of 1928, the Manchurian Incident of 1931, and the Shanghai Incident of 1932. Chinese leaders recall the efforts by Toyotomi Hideyoshi to march through Korea to capture Beijing. They see in Japanese the samurai warrior spirit and the willingness to die for their country. They are concerned that Japan might again become an aggressive militarist power, and they do not believe that Japan’s declarations of its peaceful intent are a reliable predictor of its behavior. Therefore, they are alert to any signs that militarists might once again rise to power in Japan. They are sensitive to discussions of increasing military expenditures, to proposals to eliminate Article 9 in the Japanese Constitution forbidding the use of war as a means of settling international disputes, and to the activities and statements by right-wing activists. For the Chinese, the enshrinement in the Yasukuni Shrine of the souls of Japanese military figures who were tried as class-A war criminals after World War II signals that the Japanese still respect those who took part in attacking China. Japan’s failure to separate the war criminals from the place where others who died serving Japan are enshrined is seen by the Chinese as reinforcing the readiness of young Japanese to sacrifice themselves for their country. Knowledgeable Chinese are also aware that the Yushukan Museum at the Yasukuni Shrine glorifies Japanese military achievements. Having suffered from Japanese military aggression, China’s leaders are acutely concerned when they see any sign that Japan might be becoming more militaristic. For them, the return of the souls of Japanese war criminals to the Yasukuni Shrine, and visits made by Japanese political leaders to the Yasukuni Shrine since then, arouse fears that a militaristic spirit is being revived. From the perspective of the Chinese, the actions of Japanese leaders—visiting the place where Japanese war criminals are enshrined— speak louder about Japan’s true intentions than their “empty” words about peace. china and japan . 408 . The Nanjing Massacre To the Chinese, the Nanjing Massacre represents the vicious nature of Japanese warriors. Many in China are familiar with tales about the cruelties of the Japanese. The reports of the behavior of Japanese soldiers in Nanjing resonate with what the Chinese have long heard about sword-swinging samurai and bloodthirsty Japanese pirates. When the Chinese hear statements by Japanese scholars arguing that not as many people were killed during the Nanjing Massacre as the Chinese claim, they interpret them as playing down the seriousness of the crimes that Japanese soldiers committed in China. If the Japanese try to soften the horror of the atrocities committed by their troops, it creates doubts about whether they have really turned their backs on the behavior of earlier generations. The Textbook Issue The Chinese are concerned that the next generation in Japan, rather than being trained to denounce the militarist past, will be susceptible to becoming aggressors just like earlier generations. If the Japanese are really turning their backs on their militarist past, the Chinese ask, why are they not learning the lessons of history and renouncing their past behavior in what they teach their youth? Textbooks have become a visible, concrete symbol for the Chinese to evaluate how Japanese students are being trained. Knowledgeable Chinese are aware that the textbooks used in high school social-science courses in Japan provide very little background on the two Sino-Japanese Wars. In their view, the youth in Japan today are not sufficiently aware of the horrors that were committed by Japanese soldiers and hence they do not thoroughly reject war making. If Japanese youth were to be drafted into military service by their leaders and called to war, they ask, might they not commit the same cruel acts as their grandfathers and great-grandfathers? Facing the New Era . 409 . Chinese Leaders’ Limited Contacts with Japan Since World War II, China’s leaders, unlike Chinese students who have studied in Japan, have had few contacts with the Japanese, and therefore they have not had opportunities to witness the depth of the Japanese commitment to peace. Their perspectives, like those of the Chinese public in general, are more deeply colored by memories of the Japanese atrocities of World War II. Chinese Leaders’ Use of History Leaders in China have drawn on their people’s historical memories to increase China’s leverage over Japan. The Chinese assumption has been that when Japanese leaders show signs of reviving militarism, strong complaints and warnings will eventually deter Japan from pursuing a military course. When they see signs that Japan may be becoming more militaristic, they warn the Japanese of the anger of the Chinese people. China’s leaders rallied public opinion to protest Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine on August 15, 1985, for example, on the fortieth anniversary of Japan’s surrender to the United States. They set off an anti-Japanese campaign when Japan announced plans in 2010 to try in a domestic court the Chinese fishing-boat captain who had rammed into two Japanese vessels near the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. They organized another anti-Japanese publicity campaign in 2012 when Japan announced plans to “nationalize” the islands. The leaders of China have often called attention to Japan’s aggressive history when pursuing specific goals. For example, when it appeared in the 1980s that Japan was hesitating to renew its programs to extend aid to China, Chinese complaints about Japan’s handling of history became more pronounced, subsiding only after Japan decided to renew its aid. Many Chinese individuals and Chinese businesses have also criticized Japan for its past aggressions when they have failed to receive payments from Japanese individuals or companies for other offenses. When the United Nations was considering making Japan a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the Chinese government opposed it, arguing that the position would be unacceptable because of Japan’s aggressive china and japan . 410 . behavior in the past. Chinese leaders mobilized their citizens to sign petitions and to take part in public demonstrations against Japan. Following the Chinese student demonstrations at Tiananmen Square in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 after its own domestic protests, Chinese leaders introduced the Patriotic Education Campaign to encourage patriotism among the next generation. To help build national loyalty, many articles appeared in the Chinese media that were critical of Japan for its treatment of China. The government also began using new formats—movies, video games, and other digital media—to display the brutal behavior of the Japanese and thus build greater support among Chinese youth for their leaders, who sought to protect their country from the enemy. In 2012, for example, the Chinese government approved the production of 69 anti-Japanese television series and 100 anti-Japanese films. Ever since 1915, when China opposed Japan’s Twenty-One Demands, Chinese leaders have found anti-Japanese publicity to be a useful tool for building loyalty to the Chinese government and its leadership. The Japanese History Problem The essence of the Japanese history problem is that although the Japanese overwhelmingly wish to pursue the path of peace, their respect for their own ancestors and their determination not to bow down to China have prevented them from satisfying Chinese demands. The Japanese have rejected military pursuits, but they want to respect their fellow countrymen, and especially their relatives, who sacrificed themselves for their nation. They believe that if their ancestors did bad things, it was not because they were inherently bad people but because they faced difficult circumstances in which they had little choice. Except for members of some right-wing groups in Japan, the Japanese strongly believe that it was wrong for Japan to invade China, and they deeply regret that their nation caused so much suffering. But they also feel that they have paid an enormous price—in the results of the massive aerial bombing of their cities, the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan, and the seven years of Allied Occupation. The dominant view among the Japanese public is that, after the war, the best way to deal with the suffering Japan had caused in China was to offer assistance for China’s modernization program. Facing the New Era . 411 . They are pleased that their country’s pursuit of peace and its generosity toward other countries have earned Japan a positive worldwide reputation, except in China and Korea. In their view, Japan has made great contributions to China, contributions that have been inadequately acknowledged. The Japanese recognize that the Chinese are becoming stronger, both militarily and economically. In dealings with the Chinese, the Japanese want to be treated as respected equals, not forced to submit to Chinese demands. They also believe that the Chinese use anti-Japanese rhetoric as a way of both maintaining domestic unity and extracting favors from Japan, and they respond negatively when angry Chinese leaders tell them what they must do. The Japanese believe that the Chinese have used the issue of history to achieve goals not in Japan’s interest. They have used it to issue demands for more help and more payments from Japan. They have used it to gain cooperation from other countries that also suffered from Japanese aggression and to pull them closer to China and away from Japan. The Chinese have done this with Korea, in particular, but also with Southeast Asia and the United States. The Japanese have noticed that the Chinese have called attention to the cooperation between the Americans and the Chinese during World War II in confronting their common enemy, Japan. The Japanese were deeply disappointed that China used the history issue to keep Japan from receiving a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, in spite of the fact that Japan was the number-two contributor to UN funding and that since 1945 Japan has been pursuing the path of peace. It has been difficult for Japan to find an effective way to react to accusations of past aggressions. It has responded by saying that many of the complaints about Japanese behavior are exaggerated. The Japanese also feel it is grossly unfair that they are still the focus of such criticism when Americans are no longer constantly criticized for their actions against American Indians, or Belgians for their acts in the Belgian Congo, or the British and other colonial powers for behavior in the colonies that they exploited. Why, Japan’s younger generations ask, must they continuously apologize to the Chinese for events that occurred more than seven decades ago, long before they were born? In the Pew polling for 2016, 53 percent of Japanese respondents said that Japan had apologized enough, while only 10 percent of the Chinese polled agreed. china and japan . 412 . Facing History While Looking Forward The current dialogue on history between China and Japan has focused on the unfortunate side of the relationship. Less attention has been given to the good relations between the two countries at times of great cultural borrowing, especially in the periods from 600 to 838, when Japan borrowed so heavily from China, and from 1905 to 1937 and 1978 through the 1990s, when China borrowed so much from Japan. The two cultures have changed throughout history, but there remains a broad base of commonality in the written language, literature, Buddhism, Confucianism, art, architecture, and music they share, some of which is even incorporated into popular culture, and this could form the basis for continued cooperation in the future, if permitted by national policies. Each country has placed more emphasis on its own contributions to the other and its own suffering at the hands of the other. These images have been kept alive to strengthen loyalty to the nation and to the nation’s leaders. The Chinese, especially through popular Sino-Japanese War movies, have emphasized the negative side of Sino-Japanese relations throughout history. Many Chinese people are convinced that the Japanese are aggressive by nature. In China’s patriotic narrative, the Sino Japanese War of 1937–1945 is simply the latest chapter revealing the true Japanese character. In this view, the Japanese are polite—on the surface. In the 1920s, for example, the Japanese talked about cooperation, but in the end they initiated incidents and sneak attacks against both China and the United States. The Chinese people have little awareness of the positive side of their relationship with Japan, of how much they have benefited from the “learn from Japan” programs after 1895 and the “development assistance” programs after 1978. They are not fully aware of the generosity of Japanese aid programs in the 1980s and 1990s. They are also not aware of the extent to which Japan has apologized, or how thoroughly the Japanese have renounced militarism and pursued peace. Throughout history the Japanese have had a deep sense of the Chinese as a proud and arrogant people who demand subordination by other people. Thus, ever since 607 the Japanese have maintained a reluctance to bow down to the Chinese and a determination to be treated as political equals. For the Facing the New Era . 413 . Japanese, requests by the Chinese that they grovel in apologies represent the latest version of China’s attempts to assert its superiority. The Japanese are willing to apologize, but they are not prepared to bow down and apologize in the way that the Chinese demand. The Japanese are aware of Japan’s positive contributions to China in the modernization of Manchuria and Taiwan and its contributions to China after 1895 and 1978. However, their collective historical memory directs less attention to the harm and suffering Japan caused to China, an issue that is constantly stressed by the Chinese. The Japanese government at times has not allowed textbooks critical of Japan’s aggression in China to be used in its schools, and many publications and public discussions in Japan gloss over the atrocities that Japan committed in China. What Japan and China Can Do to Face History Both countries could avoid aggravating the problems that arise from history by providing their citizens with a fuller and more accurate account of their history and a more balanced presentation of their current relations. They could help their citizens better understand their long-entangled history in a way that acknowledges how much they have learned from each other and reflects their positive experiences from working together. The Japanese prime minister and other senior officials could decide that they will not visit the Yasukuni Shrine while they are in office. The Japanese could also provide fuller accounts of the Sino-Japanese War in curriculum guidelines for compulsory high school history courses, in particular by including the word “invasion” (shinryaku) in their textbooks. Japan could produce more television programs that give a full accounting of the suffering inflicted on the Chinese people by Japan’s invasions. The Japanese people, individually, could make greater efforts to understand the history of Japanese aggression in China, as well as to better understand Chinese society and the attitudes of the Chinese people. The Chinese could teach their students more about what China learned from Japan between 1905 and 1937 as well as after 1978. They could give the public a fuller account of the Japanese turn to peace after 1945, Japanese contributions to China since 1978, and the apologies already offered by china and japan . 414 . Japanese officials. They could reduce the number of anti-Japanese movies about World War II produced and shown in China and present more balanced descriptions of Japan in their museums, their classrooms, and the media. The Chinese could also study the example of Japan’s history in the first half of the twentieth century as a warning of what can happen as a country becomes richer and stronger, when support for military expansion becomes so strong that its leaders are unable to restrain superpatriotic passions that can ultimately lead to disaster. A New Vision: Warm Politics, Hot Economics It has been customary for the Chinese and Japanese to describe their relationship as “cold politics, hot economics.” Despite poor political relations, they have extensive business relations. The question now is whether the two nations can build on their business relations and improve their political relations. Since 2010 the key leverage for improving relations has been in the hands of the Chinese, because China has suffered more and because China now has the larger economy and more global influence. Chinese leaders will of course consider how much it is in their national interest to work with Japan on regional and international issues. A fundamental question is to what extent Chinese leaders feel confident enough of the loyalty of their own people that they do not need to use anti-Japanese programs to strengthen nationalism among the populace. In the 1990s, war movies depicting Japanese enemies were an effective tool for strengthening patriotism, but their production and use could be reduced as Chinese leaders feel more confident of the patriotism of the public. It is unrealistic, considering the depth of the historical passions involved, that China and Japan will quickly develop feelings of trust and become close friends. That may be a goal for several decades in the future. A reasonable goal for the next decade would be to manage their relations in a straightforward, frank, and businesslike way so that the two countries can become reliable partners. It is unrealistic to expect that China and Japan in the next decade will enjoy “hot politics.” But if they can continue to expand their co- Facing the New Era . 415 . operation in such enterprises as the Belt and Road Initiative, in developing joint projects for solving environmental issues, and in multinational organizations, it is not impossible that they could achieve “warm politics.” A closer businesslike relationship between China and Japan should not be a problem for the United States. Some individual Americans might respond with alarm, but their alarm would be misplaced. A reduction of tensions between China and Japan, increased stability in the Western Pacific, and contributions from both countries toward maintaining world order are all outcomes that accord with the interests of the United States as well as those of other countries. An Agenda for Sino-Japanese Cooperation From 2006 to 2008, leaders and representatives of China and Japan held a series of meetings to discuss how their nations could work together for their mutual benefit and laid out an agenda to achieve that goal. In April 2007 Chinese premier Wen Jiabao visited Japan and gave a key speech—in Chinese, translated for a Japanese audience, and relayed back to China, where it was broadcast to the public in the original Chinese. He publicly stated what Japanese leaders had long hoped a Chinese leader would say. He acknowledged that on many occasions Japan’s leaders had expressed their deep remorse and apologies, and he expressed appreciation for Japan’s peaceful development. Premier Wen proposed four principles for bringing Sino-Japanese relations to a new stage: mutual trust, a big-picture perspective, common development based on equality and mutual benefit, and strengthening exchanges with an eye toward the future. The agenda that Chinese and Japanese officials then agreed to pursue includes the following goals: Expanded exchanges and dialogues among leaders, cabinet ministers, and high-level officials. Exchanges of young people. Reciprocal visits by the People’s Liberation Navy and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. Cooperation on issues involving North Korea. china and japan . 416 . Energy cooperation (including cooperation on energy conservation and environmental protection). Establishment of a ministerial-level dialogue on energy. Further cooperation in fields such as agriculture, intellectual property rights, pharmaceutical products, small and medium-size enterprises, information and communications technology, finance, and criminal justice. This agenda from 2007 has great promise as a starting point not only for the benefit of China and Japan but fot the benefit of global peace and order.