Regional integration: a possible inner drive for China, Japan to keep a lid on bilateral tensions? | ||||
2006-11-15 00:00 |
||||
by
Twenty-seven-year-old Mishima Otani felt uneasy going out when for some reason he had to talk to Chinese people. "People are still polite to me, but I have a different feeling from what I felt when I first came to As an overseas student who well knows "It's not like disagreement or argument between friends. Normal communication is weak, and only protest and indifference prevail," Otani said. The relationship between Leaders of the two neighboring countries have halted exchanges of visit for over four years, ever since Koizumi began paying homage to the controversial war shrine shortly after he took office in 2001. Last spring, more than 10,000 Chinese joined a rally in The gathering participants called out slogans as "boycott Japanese-made products," "safeguard the However, Chinese experts and analysts still believe that the increasing regional integration and economic globalization will help the two big Asian neighbors settle, or at least shelve, their current disputes and promote cooperation. "If the focus could be shifted to the entire Asia-Pacific region as a whole, you will understand that neither of the two sides (China and Japan) can afford to lacerate ties and put huge economic and security common interests at stake", said Liu Jiangyong, an international studies expert with the Beijing-based Tsinghua University.
The Japanese and the Chinese economies are the two largest in As the two countries have strong economic bonds, In terms of the regional economy, cooperation between "China now has a chance that it never had before to further promote its foreign policy of peace, development and prosperity with its neighboring countries, which is also an opportunity rather a challenge for Japan to play a bigger role in the regional affairs", Liu noted. In last April alone, top Chinese leaders -- President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao -- respectively visited At the north, China deepens its security and economic cooperation based on enhanced mutual trust with Central Asian nations, and the four-year-old Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), an intergovernmental international organization jointly founded by China, Russia, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, has witnessed more vigorous momentum of cooperation in maintaining regional security and fighting terrorism, separatism and extremism. With the successful launch of an SCO summit in At the south, "It should be recognized that China and its neighbors have all experienced a process of measuring respective strategic weight on each other, and Japan in particular, also has started a process of revaluating China," said Ruan Zongze, deputy director of China Institute of International Studies. "As the economic interdependency grows remarkably between the two nations especially in the new century, Recent polls showed that the number of Japanese people who oppose the controversial visits to the war-linked Yasukuni Shrine by a Japanese prime minister had risen to over 50 percent.
A weekend survey conducted by the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper showed that as compared with a survey in January, opponents to such visits grew 7 percentage points to 54 percent, while supporters dropped 14 percentage points to 33 percent. The Japanese government also made a formal decision in July to end its freeze on the about 74 billion yen (about 673 million U.S. dollars) aid loans to A top decision-making panel on foreign aid strategy comprising Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Foreign Minister Taro Aso and other cabinet ministers decided to do so after comprehensively considering "You can feel the delicate climate changes inside the "A solution to the issues that disturb the China-Japan relations must almost certainly await a new Japanese prime minister in 2006. However, the current Sino-Japan relations are like a stream coming up against a rock, the stream rolls ahead all the same in circumvention of the rock", the expert noted. On the Chinese side, President Hu Jintao has offered talks with Japanese leaders on the condition that they make a clear-cut decision to stop visiting the Yasukuni Shrine. "As long as the Japanese leaders make a clear-cut decision to stop visiting the Yasukuni Shrine honoring WWII war criminals, I would like to meet or have dialogue with them on how to improve Sino-Japanese relations", Hu said in his meeting with the heads of seven Japan-China friendship organizations at the end of this March. The Chinese president calls for dealing with the Sino-Japanese ties with "an attitude responsible for the history, the people and the future". "Being responsible for the history means that the historical facts should be respected, and historical lessons should be learned … being responsible for the people means that the development of China-Japan relations should always bring about concrete benefits for the two peoples…and being responsible for the future means that the two sides should persist in peaceful co-existence and friendship for the generations to come, and jointly create a bright future for the China-Japan good-neighborly friendship and mutually-beneficial cooperation", Hu said. -end- |