Japan and China, longtime Asian rivals, try to get along
Six years ago, BEIJING — angry demonstrators filled the streets in dozens of Chi- nese cities to protest Japan’s claim to islands in the East China Sea, surrounding Tokyo’s embassy, overturn- ing Japanese cars and in some cases even attacking sushi restaurants.
Two years later, President Xi Jinping met with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the sidelines of a regional con- ference in Beijing, and the body language said it all: Xi could barely muster a smile during an awkward handshake for the cameras.
As Abe begins the first state visit to China by a Japanese leader in eight years today, no one is expecting the Asian powers to become instant partners, or even to manage a major reconciliation. But battered by plummeting relations with Washington, Xi is looking to a friendlier Japan as a hedge. And though Abe has met more often with Pres- ident Donald Trump than any other foreign leader has, he is well aware of the president’s fickle treatment of U.S. allies and also wants to cover his bets.
“Both sides need each other,” said Yu Tiejun, a Japan expert at Peking University. “They need to improve relations as a response to the uncertainty brought about by Trump in Asia. This is a good begin- ning — better than a deterioration.”
Neither side is expecting miracles. The countries are strategic rivals, each trying to promote itself as the partner of choice for less powerful Asian nations. And their bloody history, dating back to World War II and before, remains a major obstacle.
Analysts say the optics of Abe’s three-day visit will be more important than the concrete outcomes, which are likely to be modest. About 500 Japanese busi- nesspeople are expected to accompany Abe to Beijing, a signal that both sides want the trading relationship — which took a deep dive from 2012 to 2014, after the rupture over the disputed islands — to keep growing.
Strategically, Japan is also seeking to position itself in the region as a counterforce to China. Last month, a Japanese submarine participated in war games in the South China Sea for the first time, then visited Vietnam, an indication that Japan was prepared to stand with other countries against China’s territorial claims in the crucial waterway.
As China rapidly mod- ernizes its military, Japan remains wary of its strategic intent. Six years after the dispute over the con- tested East China Sea islands — known as the Senkaku in Japan, and the Diaoyu in China — the Chinese navy has kept up the pressure, sending the same number of coast guard vessels into the waters off the islands as it did in 2017, the Japanese official said.
With such concerns in mind, Japan is enthusiastically participating in an informal, implicitly antiChina alliance with the United States, India and Australia, which has become known as “the quad.” The Trump administration has promoted the grouping, emphasizing that all four countries are democracies and changing the name of the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii to the Indo-Pacific Command, to signal India’s strategic role and the range of forces that could unite against China.
Indeed, soon after Abe returns from China, he will host Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, its partner in the “quad.” But the Chinese do not seem overly concerned.
“There is a possibility they could cooperate against China,” Hu Lingyuan, head of the Center for Japanese Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said of the Indo-Pacific group. “But it could not go far.”
Ezra F. Vogel, a China and Japan specialist at Harvard, said that Abe, a “pragmatic nationalist,” had a better chance of improving ties with China than did Japan’s opposition Democratic Party, which during a brief stint in power presided over the worsening of relations in 2012, despite its stated policy of getting closer to China.
Unlike the United States, Vogel said, Japan never harbored illusions that China would become like the West, an outlook that has led to more realistic expectations about the extent of a possible rapprochement. Animosity between the two Asian powers is also being reduced by “soft power” factors, like the more than 8 million Chinese tourists who visited Japan this year.
Shiro Armstrong, director of the Australia-Japan Research Center at the Australian National University, said that for Japan, “the balancing act is not to give away too much” as its ties with China develop.
“The important thing is the U.S. security relationship is vital for Japan,” he said. “That’s non-negotiable, and that’s what Japan needs to protect while it improves its relationship with China and other countries.”