APEC Summit and recent twists in Sino-Japanese relations

CHINESE, Japanese leaders meet to thaw ties” and “Government, lawmakers hail Abe-Xi summit, note difficult road ahead”—these two headlines of China Daily and Japan Times respectively on November 11, 2014 indicate the significance as well as challenges in Sino-Japanese relations in the current world. By surpassing the USA as the largest economy in the world in recent times, China has made improvement of Sino-Japanese relations inevitable. These headlines were printed on the occasion of the first formal meeting after two years between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the sideline of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga called it 'major progress' toward improving Sino-Japanese relations. Against this backdrop, this commentary focuses on the recent twists in Sino-Japanese relations.

The Abe-Xi meeting should be a new starting point to elevate Sino-Japanese relations. Shinzo Abe wrote in the social site LinkedIn on November 11: “I had summit talks with President Xi Jinping of China. We have been making quiet efforts in order to make use of the sidelines of the APEC meeting to first of all launch a dialogue between our countries' leaders.” This summit meeting became the first step towards improving Japan-China relations by returning to the starting point of a “mutually beneficial relationship based on common strategic interests.” Another major outcome of the meeting was the proposal by Abe of establishing a hotline to prevent clashes at sea although the islands were not included in the 30 minutes talk between Xi and Abe. So, although the world saw strained relations between China and Japan over the last decades due to the competing claims over islands in the East China Sea, this summit will work as an incentive to ease the relations.

If one looks closely at Sino-Japanese relations, one can see that there were confrontations as well as cooperation. Following more than a half century of conflict and confrontation, the 1980s can be termed as the decade of Sino-Japanese cooperation. Notably, Sino-Japanese Treaty of Peace and Friendship and Sino-Japanese long-term Trade Agreement signed in 1978 helped develop a mutually profitable partnership.

Japan had been the largest trading partner of China. But relations between two of the world's largest economies have been marred in recent times due to territorial and political disputes. Among recent issues, territorial disputes surrounding the Diaoyu (as known in China)/ Senkaku (as known in Japan) Islands and associated fishing rights and energy resources are major hindrances to Sino-Japanese relations. Because of such disputes, the second round meeting of the Japan-China high-level consultation on maritime affairs (September 23-24, 2014) could not achieve any concrete result.

How politics and economic are intertwined has been manifested by Sino-Japanese relations. The disputes over the islands negatively impacted on Sino-Japanese economic relations, particularly after tensions flared in September 2012. In this context, Mitsuru Obe (2014) notes that “Japan's exports to China are still reeling from a 13.8% plunge in the first half of 2013 after the island dispute and a subsequent boycott of Japanese goods in China. Faced with the deteriorating business environment, some Japanese companies started turning away from China, resulting in a 10% drop in the number of long-term Japanese residents there between October 2012 and October 2013.” It is also pertinent to note that according to Jetro, Japanese exports to China grew 2.5% to $78 billion in the first half of 2014 from the same period a year earlier. That was still down 11.7% from the first half of 2012.

Another recent development is the revision of the Japanese constitution, which might impact Sino-Japanese security relations. Liu Jiangyong, a professor at the Institute of Modern International Relations at Tsinghua University, contends that “while the two nations have enjoyed several decades of peace, there is an uneasy feeling in China that recent developments and revisions to the Japanese constitution draw parallels with the decade prior to 1894.” The last but not the least point is to emphasise the 'US factor' in understanding Sino-Japanese relations. Due to US-Japan security alliance, the US usually plays the role of a major catalyst in Japan-China relations. But China does not want to see Japan playing the American card in East China Sea.

Finally, stable and healthy Sino-Japanese relation is of fundamental interest to the two countries, the region, and the world. There is no alternative to continuing dialogues and resolving the competing claims over the Islands. In this context, taking part in dialogues and discussions would usher in a creative mechanism to resolve outstanding issues between the two global economic superpowers and Asian powers as well. And it would be a better idea to concentrate on utilising the opportunities arising from their economic interdependence and strategic compulsions in the changed milieu of East Asia.

The writer is Professor and Director at the East Asia Study Center (EASC), University of Dhaka. E-mail: [email protected]