Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe, is heading to Beijing for a summit with Chinese president Xi Jingping amidst rising tensions in the South China Sea. The visit by Abe is the first standalone to China by a Japanese PM in nearly 7 years. International relations between the People’s Republic of China..
Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe, is heading to Beijing for a summit with Chinese president Xi Jinping amidst rising tensions in the South China Sea.
The visit by Abe is the first stand-alone visit China by a Japanese PM in nearly 7 years.
Background
International relations between the People’s Republic of China and the State of Japan have been strongly influenced throughout history by China with its language, architecture, culture, religion, philosophy, and law. In the mid-19th century, China opened trade relations with the West. On the other hand, Japan began its active process of Westernization during the Meiji Restoration in 1868 adopting Western European culture. During this time, Japan started to view China as an old-fashioned civilization, incapable of shielding itself against Western influences, partly due to the First and Second Opium Wars and Anglo-French Expeditions from the 1860s to the 1880s.
The Chinese government believes that the relationship between the two nations has been strained mainly because of their wartime past. China-Japan relations have been considerably better under Shinzo Abe as Prime Minister of Japan since September 2006. However, in the early 2010s, the relations deteriorated, when Japan accused China of withholding its reserves of valuable rare-earth elements. The dispute at the Senkaku Islands also resulted in several aggressive encounters in the East China Sea.
Despite the ongoing tensions, China and Japan have been progressively improving their relationships by focusing on developing healthy ties and aiming at a new start. Presently, both nations are cooperating in numerous areas, including boosting global trade and economic activities. They are also working together on the One Belt One Road Initiative and setting up maritime and air contact system to enhance communication.
Analysis
The hostility between the two stemmed from the history of the Japanese war and the imperialism, and maritime disputes in the East China Sea. As a result, leaders from both nations are trying to suppress the tensions considering that the two nations are close business partners. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo had recently met in Vladivostok on the side-lines of the Eastern Economic Forum.
Now, in the middle of an increasingly bitter trade war with the United States, Xi will welcome Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for their first bilateral meeting in more than seven years. “For the first time for a very long time, Chinese leaders are looking for a positive relationship with Japan,” said Yun Sun, a China expert at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C. “With Trump in power, both Japan and China are feeling the heat coming from the U.S. It changes their calculations,” she said.
Xi will host Abe at a reception, attended by about 500 Japanese business leaders, in Beijing’s opulent Great Hall of the People on Wednesday night, for a celebration marking the 40th anniversary of the Treaty of Friendship (1978).
It’s a far cry from 2014 when friction over a group of disputed islands in the East China Sea raised fears that the two countries would become involved in a military conflict. Japanese companies pulled out of China in droves, and the two leaders had a famously awkward encounter at an APEC meeting.
However, China’s foreign minister and premier have both visited Japan this year, and the number of Chinese tourists following suit is expected to reach a record 8 million this year. Japan was the top destination for Chinese travellers during this month’s Golden Week holiday, according to travel website C-Trip. China is eagerly trying to improve economic relations with a raft of rich countries to try to reduce its exposure to the United States, where President Trump has slapped tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports and is threatening more.
Japan, a neighbour and China’s second-biggest export market after the United States, is an important part of this diversification effort. China has been pressing Japanese companies to announce investment plans and deals in China during Abe’s visit and has generally been pushing for an improvement in the relationship to offset the sharp deterioration with the United States.
Assessment
Our assessment is that China and Japan are overlooking their differences in order to weather the volatility caused by American sanctions. We believe that China is also looking to counter Japan’s new development projects in South East Asia by collaborating instead of competing with Tokyo. We also feel that both countries are suitable counterweights to the economic disruption caused by the US sanctions. We feel that Abe’s earlier reference to the post-normalisation relationship was characterised by the separation of political and economic relations (known as seikei buneri). This is likely to continue in the future.
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