Japanese+and+Chinese+relationship+today

__**This information is from The Diplomat, August 31, 2016**__

The Most Dangerous Problem in Asia: China-Japan Relations China and Japan have a thousand year history of fighting each other. What if that pattern repeats itself?

What is the most worrying relationship in Asia today? Where is there the greatest potential for the most destructive conflict? Would it be from North Korea, with its burgeoning and almost incessant nuclearisation program, perhaps, or the ongoing tensions between Pakistan and India?

Is a more urgent issue China's ongoing clashes with the other competing parties in the South China Sea and the potential that this might lead to direct conflict with the United States? ...

the area most strewn with competing, and frankly incompatible, visions for the region - is found in the relationship between China and Japan. It is this relationship that poses the most worrying problems for the future.

...we can boil the Sino-Japanese conundrum the world and the Asian region have to sort out down to one simple question: in view of their inability to harmoniously exist side by side for the last millenia or so, can we really see ways in which a strong China and a strong Japan manage to exist alongside each other without conflict in the 21st century?

...We know one the main sources of this recent ill feeling on the Chinese side - the continuing anger over what is seen as Japanese unwillingness to confront their history of aggression in World War II. For Japan, where the vast majority of its people were born long after the tragic events of eight decades ago, however, this persistence by China for greater, continuing penance has clearly started to grate. Japanese irritation toward the Chinese is more recent, and stems from the ways in which former prime ministers from the early 1970's onward into the 1980's made a clear strategic decision tyo engage and work with China in its modernization process but received a poor return for it. 70% of Japanese foreign aid went to China in the 1980's.

...the whole gamble of engagement with China is starting to look like it was a mistake. their neighbour has not changed politcally, nor has it developed grateful or friendly feelings towards Japan. On the contrary, it has come increasingly to look like Japan's worst nightmare -a strong, Communist led one party state, angry and harbouring revengeful sentiments toward Tokuyo. Most worrying of all, China is now building up naval military assets that look increasingly like they are pointed directly at Japan's interests.

__** This information is from The Diplomat, September 11, 2017. **__

On September 29, 1972, Japan normalised diplomatic relations with China. It has now been forty-five years since that milestone and bilateral relations have seen some colossal changes. Over the years, documents have been prepared to accommodate those changes: the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1978, the China-Japan Joint Declaration of 1998, and the China-Japan Joint Statement on Comprehensive Promotion of a "Mutually Beneficial Relationship Based on Common Strategic Interests, " which was issued in 2008. Together with the China-Japan Joint statement of 1972, these constitute the so-called four basic documents of Sino-Japanese relations. Adding to them is the four-point consensus recently agreed between Shinzo Abe and Xi Jinping administrations [governments], another document seen as outlining the basic provisions for diplomatic ties between China and Japan.

Diplomatic relations between the two Asian powers have changed markedly over the course of the past 45 years. For one thing, the point in 2010 when China's GPD exceeded that of Japan was surely a development of significant moment. Although Japan's GDP per capital still exceeds that of China, there is clearly a limit to the growth of Japan's economic power, and the difference in per capita GDP between China and Japan will continue to shrink for the foreseeable future. This has given the impression of a shift in the balance of power between the two countries.

...there have been changes in the domestic situations and inter-societal relations between the two countries. At the time of the normalisation of China-Japan relations in 1972, even acknowledging that the limits of Japan's rapid economic growth was becoming apparent, Japanese society was still enjoying robust economic development, and the general ideology of Japanese intellectuals was either leftist or liberal.

Feelings towards China were rather positive, and in fact reached their highest point during the 1980's. Today, however, values in Japanese society have greatly diversified, and social thinking has become quite conservative in comparison with the past.

...In China these changes may be even more marked. In 1972, China was in the midst of its Cultural Revolution. Why was it necessary for China to approach the capitalist United States, or to normalise diplomatic relations with Japan? By presenting policies and persuading the public, the state and Communist Party were able to conduct a foreign policy that differed in logic from its domestic policies.

In modern day Chinese society, however, with its increasing wealth and improving quality of life, the views of Chinese people have rapidly diversified and the relationship between the state and society has changed. It can be said that society has ceased to function based solely on state and party policies. Conversely, one could argue that state and party propaganda actually have too much influence over the people - even more than intended - and that they are limiting the range of choices available to the state and/or party with regard to foreign policy.

...although China and Japan have built a tight economic relationship, they have an essentially confrontational dynamic in the security domain. this is a phenomenon that is distinctly East Asian in character. That is to say that, even after the end of the Cold War, nothing reminiscent of the expansion of NATO in Europe has taken place in this region.

...In the present day, history, territorial issues and the sovereignty of Taiwan are the three greatest concerns between China and Japan.