[As Mr. Abe begins the first state visit to China by a Japanese leader in eight years on Thursday, no one is expecting the Asian powers to become instant partners, or even to manage a major reconciliation. But in the age of Trump, both are looking for a little more normality.]
By Jane Perlez
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Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, left, and President Xi Jinping of China
last
November on the sidelines of a regional summit meeting in Vietnam.
The two
will meet again in Beijing this week. Credit Kentaro Aoyama/
Yomiuri
Shimbun, via Associated Press
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BEIJING — Six years
ago, angry demonstrators filled the streets in dozens of Chinese cities to
protest Japan’s claim to islands in the East China Sea, surrounding Tokyo’s
embassy, overturning Japanese cars and in some cases even attacking sushi
restaurants.
Two years later, President Xi Jinping
met with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the sidelines of a regional conference in
Beijing, and the body language said it all: Mr. Xi could barely muster a smile
during an awkward handshake for the cameras.
As Mr. Abe begins the first state
visit to China by a Japanese leader in eight years on Thursday, no one is
expecting the Asian powers to become instant partners, or even to manage a
major reconciliation. But in the age of Trump, both are looking for a little
more normality.
Battered by plummeting relations with
Washington, and particularly by President Trump’s trade war, Mr. Xi is looking
to a friendlier Japan as a hedge. And though Mr. Abe has met more often with
Mr. Trump than any other foreign leader has, he is well aware of the
president’s fickle treatment of American allies and also wants to cover his
bets.
“Both sides need each other,” said Yu
Tiejun, a Japan expert at Peking University. “They need to improve relations as
a response to the uncertainty brought about by Trump in Asia. This is a good
beginning — better than a deterioration.”
Neither side is expecting miracles.
The countries are strategic rivals, each trying to promote itself as the
partner of choice for less powerful Asian nations. And their bloody history,
dating back to World War II and before, remains a major obstacle.
Analysts say the optics of Mr. Abe’s
three-day visit will be more important than the concrete outcomes, which are
likely to be modest. About 500 Japanese businesspeople are expected to
accompany Mr. Abe to Beijing, a signal that both sides want the trading relationship
— which took a deep dive from 2012 to 2014, after the rupture over the disputed
islands — to keep growing.
China is Japan’s largest trading
partner. Even as Mr. Trump’s trade conflict with China rages, the Japanese auto
giant Toyota plans to increase production in China by 20 percent, expanding
plants in two major Chinese cities, according to news reports in Japan
To show that its ties with China can
improve, Japan has agreed to sign an accord in Beijing calling for them to work
together on infrastructure projects in developing countries.
But even that agreement will reflect
the two powers’ rivalry. Japan has stipulated that it does not want to be
involved in so-called Belt and Road projects — China’s ambitious bid to draw
countries into its orbit through infrastructure investment — unless
international standards of transparency and fiscal sustainability are applied,
said a senior Japanese official, who spoke on condition of anonymity according
to diplomatic custom.
Some countries involved in Belt and
Road projects, like Malaysia and Sri Lanka, have accused China of saddling them
with excessive debt. By insisting on standards developed by the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development, of which Japan is a member but China
is not, Japan can signal to developing countries that it is a fairer partner,
the Japanese official said.
Japan believes it has made that
distinction clear in Myanmar, for example, where it is the biggest foreign
donor. Japan has built functioning infrastructure there, while China was forced
to cancel dam construction over environmental concerns and is bogged down in
negotiating the finances of other projects.
Strategically, Japan is also seeking
to position itself in the region as a counterforce to China. Last month, a
Japanese submarine participated in war games in the South China Sea for the
first time, then visited Vietnam, an indication that Japan was prepared to
stand with other countries against China’s territorial claims in the crucial
waterway.
As China rapidly modernizes its
military, Japan remains wary of its strategic intent. Six years after the
dispute over the contested East China Sea islands — known as the Senkaku in
Japan, and the Diaoyu in China — the Chinese Navy has kept up the pressure,
sending the same number of coast guard vessels into the waters off the islands
as it did in 2017, the Japanese official said.
With such concerns in mind, Japan is
enthusiastically participating in an informal, implicitly anti-China alliance
with the United States, India and Australia, which has become known as “the
quad.” The Trump administration has promoted the grouping, emphasizing that all
four countries are democracies and changing the name of the Pacific Command in
Hawaii to the Indo-Pacific Command, to signal India’s strategic role and the
range of forces that could unite against China.
Indeed, soon after Mr. Abe returns
from China he will host Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, its partner in
the “quad.” But the Chinese do not seem overly concerned.
“There is a possibility they could
cooperate against China,” Hu Lingyuan, head of the Center for Japanese Studies
at Fudan University in Shanghai, said of the Indo-Pacific group. “But it could
not go far.”
Ezra F. Vogel, a China and Japan
specialist at Harvard, said that Mr. Abe, a “pragmatic nationalist,” had a
better chance of improving ties with China than did Japan’s opposition
Democratic Party, which during a brief stint in power presided over the
worsening of relations in 2012, despite its stated policy of getting closer to
China.
Unlike the United States, Mr. Vogel
said, Japan never harbored illusions that China would become like the West, an
outlook that has led to more realistic expectations about the extent of a
possible rapprochement. Animosity between the two Asian powers is also being
reduced by “soft power” factors, like the more than eight million Chinese
tourists who visited Japan this year.
Shiro Armstrong, director of the
Australia-Japan Research Center at the Australian National University, said
that for Japan, “the balancing act is not to give away too much” as its ties
with China develop.
“The important thing is the U.S.
security relationship is vital for Japan,” he said. “That’s nonnegotiable, and
that’s what Japan needs to protect while it improves its relationship with
China and other countries.”
Still, some Chinese analysts have
suggested that given the volatility of Mr. Trump, who has warmed to Japan’s nemesis North
Korea and threatened in the past to pull American troops from
the region, Mr. Xi should be able to sow doubts about Japan’s American allies
during Mr. Abe’s visit.
“The Trump administration’s economic nationalism and trade
protectionism are a leading driver to improved ties between Beijing and Tokyo,”
said Zhu Feng, an Asia expert at Nanjing University. “Trump clearly increases
Japan’s skepticism toward America’s role and credibility in the region.”
But China should not expect too much from that, at least in the
short term, Mr. Vogel said.
“Abe is thinking of a long time frame,
of building a framework where China and Japan can work together and live
together as neighbors without conflict,” Mr. Vogel said.
Motoko Rich contributed reporting from Tokyo. Luz Ding
contributed research.