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We should be
delighted that the tense relations between China
and Japan have been defused ever since Shinzo Abe,
who succeeded Junichiro Koizumi as Japan's prime
minister, visited
Beijing last month. Apart from
a small number of people, no one wants to see
conflict between the two countries.
Nevertheless, both leaders continue to
shelve the issue of history that in recent years
has come to the surface. Therefore, the seeds of
tension are still incubated in the land of mutual
distrust between them, which easily can give rise
to new rivalry and hostility. In other words, if
the two countries don't tackle the history
question successfully, they will never live in
harmony.
About 20 years ago, the history
question was clear-cut. At that time, the Chinese
government's opinion was very clear - that Japan
had invaded China and made millions of Chinese
people suffer great pain from the 1930s to the
1940s. China suffered in the hands of Japanese
militarists.
Meanwhile, the Chinese
government maintained that Japanese common people
were also victims of World War II, and therefore
the Chinese people should be friendly to and
sympathetic with them; in addition, learning from
history, the two countries ought to face the
future to develop peaceful, friendly and stable
bilateral relations.
To demonstrate the
Chinese government's and people's forgiveness to
Japan and the Japanese people, the Chinese
government decided to forgo any war indemnity. In
return, Japan helped China develop its economy
with foreign aid. As a result, the two states
established diplomatic relations in the 1970s, and
maintained good relations for almost two decades.
However, after Junichiro Koizumi came to
power as prime minister, good relations gradually
froze, and hostility rose both in China and in
Japan. In 2003, spontaneous anti-Japan
demonstrations erupted in several Chinese cities,
stimulated by Japanese provocations on the history
question. It was clear that Koizumi's
administration had defied its previous
counterparts' tacit understanding of the history
question.
From 2001 to 2006, Koizumi made
annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors
the collective spirit of Japan's war dead,
including top-level World War II criminals
convicted by the Tokyo war tribunal. His
government also approved controversial historical
textbooks for use in Japanese middle schools,
which whitewashed the cruel invasion of China and
other Asian countries.
Obviously,
Koizumi's government had broken the continuity in
Sino-Japanese relations based on the shared tacit
understanding of Sino-Japanese modern history
maintained by the two countries' previous leaders.
Japan was swiftly revising the shared historical
opinion in Sino-Japanese relations.
It has
been said that Koizumi wanted to revitalize
Japan's sense of self, because Japan's identity as
a global economic power had been diminished after
the economic bubble burst in the early 1990s,
which happened to be in tandem with China's rise.
Its international image was deeply shaped by the
US-Japan alliance, in which Japan was easily
recognized as a subordinate state under US
military protection.
However, maybe we
cannot neglect another possible reason: that
Koizumi simply wanted to cater to right-wing
nationalists, conservatives and even militarists
in Japan to cement his power and his party's
political status.
In contrast, China has
not changed its position vis-a-vis Japan. As a
developing country, it has focused on economic
development and political stability and seeks
friendly and reciprocal beneficial relations with
Asian neighbors, including Japan, which explicitly
shows that China will not revise its views on
modern Chinese-Japanese history to provoke its
neighbors.
Certainly, as a sovereign
state, Japan has the right to change its
historical opinion; yet it cannot push the
responsibility for the tension in bilateral
relations to China's side. China was a victim of
the Japanese invasion, and now it is still
influenced by Japanese domestic politics and
societal and economic issues.
So when
there doesn't exist a shared historical opinion
between these two countries with Japan's official
revision of Sino-Japanese modern history in recent
years, the history question matters. If the
history question continues to fester, there will
no stable and friendly diplomatic relations.
Thus the best approach to lessen the
tension in Sino-Japanese relations is to cooperate
in "writing" a shared history as an important
first step. For its part, the Japanese government
should stop revising its historical opinion before
these two countries achieve a consensus on the
history question.
Perhaps Shinzo Abe's
election is a good chance, but the touchstone of
his administration's sincerity to improve
Sino-Japanese relations is whether his government
is willing to remove the history question by
stopping revising historical opinion before there
is a consensus about historical opinion between
these two Pacific powers.
Jian
Junbo is an academic visitor at Durham
University, United Kingdom, and a permanent
researcher at the Center for European Studies,
Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
