Beijing, Tokyo must build mutual trust to improve ties
In February 1972, then US president Richard Nixon visited Beijing in an effort to improve his country’s relations with China. Since it didn’t get prior information from the United States about the trip, Japan was caught unawares.
Japan’s foreign policy has been based on a close relationship with the US since 1945.
And since it didn’t have diplomatic relations with China at the time, Japan felt it was being ignored while a new order was taking shape in Asia.
Learning that Washington and Beijing had not normalized diplomatic relations during the Nixon’s visit, Japan was relieved. Takeo Fukuda, then Japanese foreign minister, said Nixon’s visit would serve as an example for Japan to normalize relations with China. And then Japanese chief cabinet secretary Noboru Takeshita said Nixon’s China visit had made the distance between Washington and Beijing shorter than that between Tokyo and Beijing. “But Japan is now in a better position to close that distance,” he added.
On Sept 25, 1972, Kakuei Tanaka, then Japanese prime minister, visited Beijing, the first official visit by a Japanese prime minister after the end of World War II. Following that visit, China and Japan normalized their diplomatic relations.
The current Japanese foreign policy continues to take cues from the US.
This year, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has tried to reach out to China in the hope of not being “excluded” as US President Donald Trump’s administration moves closer to Beijing. Trump accepted President Xi Jinping’s invitation to visit China when the two met in Florida in February.
In a letter to the Chinese president delivered by Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party Secretary-General Toshihiro Nikai who visited Beijing in mid-May to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, Abe called for resuming “shuttle diplomacy” in which both leaders regularly visit each other’s countries.
And to build that solid relationship, the two sides need to make efforts to first build mutual trust.