Japanese leaders' insistence on visiting the Yasukuni Shrine,
where memorial tablets of World War II war criminals are housed,
has knotted up China-Japan relations, which is difficult to
untie.
The most feasible thing to do is to promote better ties with a
greater variety of channels.
The first thing that needs to happen in tackling the tough
situation is promoting non-governmental exchanges in attempts to
improve official ties.
Sino-Japanese ties traditionally consist of two parts
people-to-people interactions and official relations. Before the
rapprochement in 1972, for instance, far-sighted Chinese and
Japanese personnel prompted non-governmental exchanges to promote
the development of official ties between the two countries, which
eventually led to the normalization of diplomatic relations in
1972.
As Sino-Japanese ties have run into straits, promoting official
relations through non-governmental exchanges is definitely a
political imperative.
It is people who exercise influence on international relations.
Non-governmental exchanges have long constituted the human and
social basis on which inter-country relations rest. The more
solidly grounded this basis is, the better the inter-country ties
are.
Since the approach of promoting official ties through
people-to-people exchanges worked well before the Sino-Japanese
rapprochement, it may as well be applied today, and more
strenuously.
Importance should be especially attached to the exchanges
between the two countries' younger generations.
The Japan-China 21st Century Foundation was founded in Japan
this year, which intends to invite 150 Chinese senior high school
students each year to visit Japan. This will foster the exchanges
between the youths from both nations. On the part of China, such
organizations should be instituted to attract more Japanese young
people to China for visits.
Promoting the progress of economic relations between the two
countries in order to boost political ties eventually is also an
essential move.
In the scenario of deteriorating Sino-Japanese relations, some
people from both sides have suggested that "economic cards" be
played to force the other side to make concessions.
The Japanese Government, for example, has decided recently to
freeze yen loans to China for the current fiscal year. This is
regarded as "playing economic cards." But the progress of economic
relations between China and Japan benefits both sides. So anything
that does harm to the economic ties, which constitute the physical
foundation for the general relationship of the two nations, should
be opposed.
China will never play "the economic cards." Instead, the country
will try to warm up political ties through heated economic
relations.
Another way to better ties is by promoting cultural exchanges to
cultivate friendly feelings.
Cultural exchanges are actually exchanges of people, feelings
and hearts. China and Japan share a 2,000-year history of cultural
exchanges. Both cultures are part of the same civilization system
and both are the recipients of Western civilization's fruits in
contemporary times.
The idea of promoting cultural exchanges to cultivate friendly
feelings has been shared by more and more people on both sides in
the face of icy political relations.
No one should expect cultural exchanges to bring about immediate
relations improvement between the two nations.
Though the individual cultural program has little impact on the
inter-country relations, the sum of thousands of such projects
would have great significance.
In order to exercise influence on the central authorities,
exchanges between localities on both sides should also be made.
There are 299 pairs of sister cities between China and Japan and
exchanges between these cities are very active, which indicates
that the political coldness is limited to the central authorities
level.
Some scholars believe localities' co-operation is a more
effective way to improve the Sino-Japanese ties than the approaches
previously mentioned.
This is because local governments have the physical power to
help push the people-to-people, economic and cultural exchanges and
the exchanges between local governments of the two countries. All
this will eventually impact the central authorities.
It is also important to promote multilateral co-operation so
bilateral co-operation between China and Japan would be, in turn,
propelled.
In recent years, China and Japan have been working together in
the "10 plus 3" (10 ASEAN countries plus China, the Republic of
Korea and Japan) co-operation, in the six-party talks on the Korean
Peninsula nuclear issue and in other regional co-operative
undertakings. This demonstrates that the two sides share increasing
common interests in regional and international affairs.
Both nations have tacit mutual understanding that no bilateral
disputes be brought into multilateral and regional co-operation
because multilateral things come before bilateral ones, and
regional affairs before bilateral ones, too. The telecommunications
ministerial conference among China, ROK and Japan, which was
introduced in 2002, has held four sessions, which is the embodiment
of the trilateral co-operation.
At its fourth session held earlier this year in Xiamen, East
China's Fujian Province, the three sides co-organized
the Asia Home Network Council to facilitate the progress of the
Internet in Asia.
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China-Japan co-operation in multilateral and regional frameworks is
bound to play a positive role in promoting the relations between
the two nations as a whole.
Lastly, approaching the issue of Sino-Japanese relations with
reason is a realistic way to promote mutual understanding.
Rational attitudes here mean looking at each other objectively
and treating each other with fairness, with the fundamental
interests of the two nations as the point of departure.
Irrational attitudes, by contrast, serve only to hinder the
mutual understanding or trigger serious misunderstanding.
In view that the media in both countries has great influence on
shaping the public's opinion about each other, objectivity and
justness are called for in the reporting of each other.
The author is a senior research fellow with the Chinese
Academy of Social Sciences.
(China Daily May 10, 2006)
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