BEIJING—China portrayed the visit on Saturday by the Japanese foreign minister as an act of outreach to an angry Beijing, as the two sides try to repair relations bedeviled by disputes over territory, history and competition for influence in East Asia.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Fumio Kishida that the ties must be based on “respect for history, adherence to commitment, and on cooperation rather than confrontation.”
Relations have gone through “twists and turns in recent years due to reasons best known by Japan,” Wang said, adding that China desires “healthy and stable relations” with its neighbor and key economic partner.
Japan needs to “turn its words into deeds,” Wang said.
High-level ties between the two countries have been largely frozen since Japan nationalized a string of uninhabited East China Sea islands claimed by China in 2012, sparking deep anger among Chinese.
Kishida’s visit is the first formal one to China by a Japanese foreign minister in more than four years.
Despite their crucial economic relationship, many Chinese harbor deep animosity toward Japan dating from its brutal invasion and occupation of much of China during the 1930s and 1940s.
Meanwhile, distrust toward Beijing runs deep among the Japanese public, who see their country’s economic and political influence being overshadowed by a rising China.
China is also deeply critical of Japan’s alliance with the US and has warned Tokyo to keep out of a festering dispute over China’s moves to cement its claim over virtually the entire South China Sea. Beijing has also lambasted moves by Japanese conservatives seen as whitewashing the country’s militaristic past and minimizing World War II atrocities committed in China and elsewhere.
The first visit to China by a Japanese foreign minister in more than four years is seen as paving the way for a leaders’ summit as Asia’s two biggest economies seek to reduce tensions over territorial disputes and historical animosities.
The diplomatic push comes as China prepares to host Group of 20 (G-20) leaders, including Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, at a get-together in Hangzhou in September, offering the chance for a rare meeting with President Xi Jinping.
“Both sides are wanting to prepare the ground for a Xi-Abe meeting, which looks positive diplomatically while looking strong politically at home,” said Tim Summers, senior consulting fellow on Asia at Chatham House in Hong Kong. “The relationship seems to have stabilized: it will be unlikely to improve substantially at the moment, but the periods of real concern seemed to have passed.”
Relations between Xi and Abe remain tense as simmering territorial disputes in key Asian waters and lingering resentment over Japan’s wartime past continue to divide the regional powers. Slowing economic growth in the two countries, which boast more than $300 billion in annual bilateral trade, is creating an imperative to overcome those differences.
‘Positive meaning’
“We believe that a sound and steady development of the China-Japan relationship serves the common interest of the two countries and has a positive meaning to regional peace and stability,” Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hua Chunying said at a briefing on Wednesday. “Our relations have shown signs of improvement, yet, in the meantime, are still facing challenges. We hope Japan can meet China halfway.”
Once the dominant military and economic power in the region, Japan has seen its economic muscle eclipsed by China and its military superiority eroded. China surpassed Japan as the world’s second biggest economy in 2010, with its stock market overtaking Tokyo’s in 2014.
China remains Japan’s biggest trading partner, and the decline in the yen under Abe has attracted flocks of Chinese tourists who have propped up sagging Japanese retail sales.
“China and Japan are important neighbors,” Japan’s Kishida told reporters as the meeting got underway on Saturday. “I’m very happy that we are able to have this foreign ministers’ meeting today. I’m also thankful for China’s thoughtful arrangements.”
Territorial spats
With its growing military and economic clout, China has become more aggressive in challenging the status quo in regional disputes, straining ties. In the East China Sea, where both China and Japan assert sovereignty over a group of uninhabited islets administered by Tokyo, coast-guard ships regularly tail each other, and China has declared an air-defense identification zone to lay claim to the airspace near the islands.
The dispute has triggered violence that has hampered trade. The Japanese government’s decision to purchase some of the islands from a private owner in September 2012, ostensibly to prevent a nationalist politician from gaining control, triggered anti-Japanese protests in China. The unrest caused Chinese sales at all three of Japan’s largest carmakers to plunge for three straight quarters.
In the South China Sea, Beijing has reclaimed more than 1,200 hectares to build up artificial islands, some of them featuring ports and runways that will allow it to better assert its claims to a waterway that hosts more than $5 trillion in annual shipping. In recent months, Japan’s backing of US efforts to challenge China there by sailing warships near its islands has prompted warnings from
Beijing that Japan needs to stay out of the dispute.
“The fundamental strategic mistrust between the two countries will continue to dog the relationship,” said Zhang Baohui, director of the Center for Asian Pacific Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. “Their conflict in the South China Sea is actually intensifying as Japan starts to send naval vessels to the area.”
Xi may also see Japan as a surrogate for the US in any bilateral talks. Japan is the US’s biggest military staging ground in Asia, and the country is home to the Seventh Fleet and about 50,000 troops, the US’s biggest overseas contingent.
“China feels it needs to reciprocate to a certain degree even if it doesn’t feel too easy about it, because not talking to Japan would encourage Japan to lean too close to the US and would not help improve its own relations with the US,” said Kang Jun Young, a professor of Chinese affairs at Seoul’s Hankuk
University of Foreign Studies.
War anniversary
While China may be feeling more urgency to improve ties with Japan, Xi still remains suspicious of Abe, given his links to nationalists who continue to defend Japan’s role in trying to conquer much of Asia before and during World War II. China was the biggest victim of Japanese aggression, with estimates of casualties from Japan’s occupation running as high as 20 million.
China marked the 70th anniversary of the end of the war in September of last year with a military parade in Beijing in an event titled the “Chinese People’s Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.” Abe did not attend.
AP and Bloomberg News
Image credits: Jason Lee /Pool Photo via AP