Beijing Urges Tokyo to Reject ‘Zero-Sum Game Trap’, Avoid Joining Confrontational Blocs

Japanese and Chinese flagsSpeaking at an event commemorating half a century of diplomatic relations, Chinese Foreign Minister and State Councilor Wang Yi urged Tokyo to maintain their peaceful relationship and not join anti-China political blocs like those being organized by the United States.“China and Japan should treat each other with sincerity and strive to live together peacefully,” rather than provoke each other’s core interests, including “heavily sensitive issues involving history and Taiwan,” Wang said in a virtual address to a Wednesday event in Tokyo commemorating the event.“The differences that exist between the two sides should be properly dealt with in accordance with the existing consensus, and more new consensus should be constantly sought,” Wang said, adding that there was an opportunity “to push China-Japan relations forward in the right direction in a sustained and stable manner.”Wang’s comments on Wednesday come a day after Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada announced plans to increase Japanese military spending by 50% in the next five years to “firmly secure the necessities to pursue substantial reinforcement.”Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning denounced the move as “highly dangerous,” telling reporters it would “put Asian neighbors and the international community on high alert about Japan’s commitment to an exclusively defensive policy and to peaceful development.”© Photo : Kaijō JieitaiJS Izumo (DDH-183)JS Izumo (DDH-183)Long allied with Washington, Tokyo has moved in recent years to reassert its military power, revamping several “multipurpose destroyers” into de facto aircraft carriers and debating removing the neutrality clause from its constitution. Japan has also participated in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), a bloc with the US, India and Australia that is aimed at blocking Chinese expansion in the region.

‘Perpetual Peace and Friendship’

Japan established relations with the People’s Republic of China on September 29, 1972, at which time Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai signed a joint communique agreeing to “establish relations of perpetual peace and friendship.”The agreement saw Tokyo end its relations with the so-called Republic of China, which only governed Taiwan, and recognize the PRC in Beijing as the “sole legal government” of China. In the civil war 23 years earlier, communist forces overthrew the Republic and established a socialist government in Beijing, declaring the moment to be the end of a century of Chinese subservience to foreign powers.One of those powers had been Japan, which at the height of its imperial power had seized and occupied large swaths of northern and eastern China, including Taiwan, which Tokyo used as a colony for sugar and other tropical cash crops. By the time allied Chinese communist and republican forces pushed the Japanese out of China at the end of World War II, 20 million Chinese had been killed.While Japan was disarmed and made constitutionally neutral at the end of the war, and its colonial holdings given independence, the wounds of that war are not yet fully healed. One of the most sensitive is the inclusion of war criminals among the honored dead at Japan’s Yasukuni Shrine: Beijing was incensed in August when Kishida sent an offering to the shrine.© AFP 2022 / JAPAN POOL VIA JIJI PRESSJapan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (L) shakes hands with China’s President Xi Jinping during their meeting in Bangkok on November 17, 2022, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit.Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (L) shakes hands with China’s President Xi Jinping during their meeting in Bangkok on November 17, 2022, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit.

Talks Amid Disputes

Speaking at another event commemorating the half-century anniversary in September, Kishida said he “would like to build constructive and stable Japan-China relations for the peace and prosperity of not only our two nations but also the region and the world.”Last month, Kishida and Chinese President Xi Jinping had their first in-person meeting while both were attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Thailand. At that meeting, the two leaders emphasized the importance of such close neighbors cooperating on common interests, but Kishida mused that “serious concerns” still existed about Chinese military activities in the South China Sea, where Beijing’s land claims overlap with those of another half-dozen regional nations.Beijing and Tokyo have their own territorial dispute, too, over a group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea that are called Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan. The islands occupy a strategic position near the Miyako Strait, Taiwan Strait, and Taiwan island itself, which China claims as a Chinese province that is governed by foreign-backed rebels.In August, a visit by then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to Taipei provoked fury in Beijing, which launched provocative military drills near the island. During those drills, Japan claimed a Chinese missile had landed in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) waters, but China rejected the claim, saying the border hadn’t been agreed upon.Days later, Wang snubbed his Japanese counterpart, Yoshimasa Hayashi, at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, walking out of the room during his speech. However, Hayashi is now expected to visit China before the year is out, according to Chinese media reports.

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