China, Japan Divided by a Shared History

With each passing year, Japan and China--Asia’s two main powers--seem to drift a bit further apart.

During the 1980s, it looked as if the two historic rivals had worked out a surprising rapprochement. China viewed Japan as a model for how an Asian country could modernize without giving up its soul. And Japan saw China both as a burgeoning economic market and as the source of many of Japan’s cultural traditions.

Times have changed. As China’s Communist leadership defines nationalism as its sole remaining ideology, and as Japan moves toward a softer form of nationalism, the tendency becomes ever greater to revive and dwell upon the animosities of the past. China still insists on apologies for World War II that Japan thinks it gave long ago.

“We believe we have already made enough apologies,” says Senshu University professor Tatsumi Okabe, who notes that Japanese leaders have formally apologized at least three times so far.

The economic ties between Japan and China aren’t what they used to be, either. Japanese investment in the Chinese mainland dropped 20% last year and has been falling each year since 1995.

Japanese firms are turning to other Asian countries, such as Vietnam and Indonesia, for the sort of low-cost labor they used to obtain in China. Meanwhile, China has begun to manufacture on its own many of the consumer goods, like TV sets, that it bought from Japan 15 years ago.

Now the leaders of Japan and China are about to try to dance with one another again.

Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi is headed for Beijing on July 8 to see if he can improve upon the sour visit here last fall by Chinese President Jiang Zemin--a trip that was dominated by Jiang’s incessant reminders of Japan’s early 20th century militarism.

So far, the outlook for the next summit isn’t so good either. A few days ago, Tokyo announced that Obuchi’s visit to China would probably be shorter than originally planned--two days instead of four.

Just logistics, insist the Japanese. “It’s simply because of the [Japanese] legislature’s schedule,” a Foreign Ministry official says. But the result will probably be a visit that is, at best, long on formalities and short on warmth.

There are some things on which the two countries can still find common cause. The Japanese prime minister will voice support for China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, and may announce that Tokyo and Beijing have reached their own deal on the terms for China’s membership in the world trade group.

But when it comes to foreign policy and defense, Japan and China will find much less on which they can agree.

The most important point of contention is Japan’s recent adoption of defense guidelines that broaden its security alliance with the United States. Beijing complains that the strengthened Japanese American partnership is aimed at curbing Chinese power, and it has sought assurances that the guidelines don’t cover Taiwan, which Beijing considers part of China.

To show its unhappiness, diplomats here say, China has recently stepped up the number of warships it is sending into waters around the Senkaku islands, which are claimed by both Japan and China. Beijing seems to be testing how Japan will react to the increased military activity.

Japanese officials here say Obuchi will try to reassure China on these security issues.

“We believe it would be a good time for us to explain our defense policies, and also our position on the Taiwan issue, at a high level,” says Shiro Sadoshima, director of Chinese and Mongolian affairs at the Japanese Foreign Ministry.

But it’s unlikely that China will be satisfied. And younger Japanese think there are limits to how far their government should go. “We are not all Ishihara-sans,” says Keio University professor Ryosei Kokubun, referring to the ardent nationalist Shintaro Ishihara, the recently elected governor of Tokyo prefecture. “But in some ways, we understand what he means.”

If you want a symbol of how things are going between Japan and China, look at the proposal for a high-speed train in China that would run between Beijing and Shanghai.

One possibility is for China to give the contract to Japan, whose bullet trains make it one of the leaders in the field. (The rival bidder is a European consortium.)

Yet a problem has cropped up with the Japanese bid. The route for this train would go through China’s eastern coastal areas, the ones occupied by Japan during World War II--including the city of Nanjing, where Japanese troops ran amok.

And so the inevitable questions have cropped up: Will the Chinese let Japan build such a prominent project through Nanjing? Will Beijing insist on a few more apologies first? Or will China finesse the issue by giving the contract to the Europeans?

Whenever history gets in the way of business contracts, you know these two Asian giants aren’t getting along particularly well.

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Jim Mann’s column appears in this space every Wednesday.