China and Japan: Partners or Permanent Rivals?

Relations between China and Japan, the most populous and the most prosperous countries in Asia, although giant trading-partners, have been in malaise since the end of the last century. A new prickly nationalism has emerged in China as a unifying ersatz ideology for fading communism, and playing the 'history card' against an unrepentant Japan became a convenient tool in a new power game. Recurrent tensions over World War II issues got worse in 2001 after Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi committed himself to annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, the symbol of Japan's right-wing nationalist denial of war guilt. Koizumi wanted Japan to become a 'normal country' - that is, with no constitutional restraints on the exercise of military power.

In April 2005 new tensions over Taiwan, US-Japanese joint missile defence, an escalating dispute over oil and gas-drilling rights, publication of a new offensive history textbook and an internet campaign to oppose Japan's accession to the United Nations Security Council culminated in violent anti-Japanese demonstrations in major Chinese cities. In March 2006, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso hinted at military retaliation if China pushed ahead with oil-drilling in the East China Sea. Fortunately, cooler heads on both sides managed to calm the situation. Koizumi's heir-apparent, Shinzo Abe lost no time in arranging for the first fully fledged Sino-Japanese summit in five years and both sides pledged to build a relationship of trust to replace the tense 'cold politics versus hot economics' of previous years.

More information

Information is available at the secretariat of the Clingendael Diplomatic Studies Programme of the Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael, contact by email or tel. 070-3746605.