Tuesday marks the 74th anniversary of the beginning of the Nanjing Massacre, a series of commemorative activities have been launched in China. Historical issues were once, during former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's tenure, the biggest obstacle to a healthy relationship between China and Japan.
But today, security issues are of greater significance in Sino-Japanese ties than historical tangles.
China and Japan will embrace the 40th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations next year. The two need a joint plan based on reality to promote diplomatic security ties over the next four decades.
Although China and Japan have issued a joint statement to promote mutually beneficial strategic ties in 2008, strategic conflicts between the two have grown, which in turn endangers everyday ties between the two countries.
Currently, the Japanese attitudes toward China are even worse than that when Koizumi was in office, reaching a historical low. According to an official Japanese survey last October, nearly 88.6 percent Japanese believe that the Sino-Japanese relationships are poor and 70.8 percent considered Chinese unfriendly to Japan.
The Yomiuri Shimbun released the results of opinion polls conducted in China, Japan and South Korean on November 12, in which 35 percent of respondents saw the Diaoyu Islands disputes as the most urgent problem in the Sino-Japanese relationship. Another opinion poll by GenronNPO and China Daily in August concluded that fewer Chinese than before view Japan as a military threat, while more and more Japanese believe China is a threat to Japan. The Japanese judgment is mainly based on the maritime and territorial disputes between the two countries and China's growing military strength.
Security is the core of national interests. Since there are island disputes between China and Japan, if one side seeks its own security, it will reduce the security of others involved. This is a typical security dilemma. To solve this, China and Japan should pay more attention to building sustainable security, insisting on peaceful means and international cooperation to achieve long-term security at a comparatively low cost.
We should distinguish between peaceful and violent multilateralism. A vivid example of violent multilateralism is the Libya war. The Obama administration gave up unilateralism and promoted violent multilateralism through NATO, but ironically, the freedom and democracy that the US advocates resulted in the rise of some anti-US groups. The Libyan war will also have negative effects on the international nuclear non-proliferation system.
In Northeast Asia, one manifestation of violent multilateralism is the joint military exercise between the US and Japan or South Korea, while the Six-Party Talks represent peaceful multilateralism. Japan and the US are combing island sovereignty disputes with military alliances, which will further encourage the violent multilateralism in this region.
Security issues are one of the causes of the pessimistic attitude toward China in Japan and an obstacle to improving bilateral relations, but it doesn't mean sustainable security between China and Japan is impossible.
Since World War II, Japan has stuck to a peaceful constitution, non-nuclearization, and peaceful coexistence with neighboring countries under the security umbrella of the US. These are acceptable to China. China has always insisted on peaceful development, and the US-Japan alliance shouldn't disturb its way by posing dangers to China.
China and Japan shouldn't view each other as threatening, and shouldn't resort to force in any dispute. A maritime crisis management system should be built as soon as possible to prevent any accident concerning the disputed islands or waters from affecting the overall pattern of the two countries' bilateral relations.
China and Japan have reached consensus on the necessity of such a mechanism, but how to proceed needs further negotiation.
The article is an excerpt from a recent speech by Liu Jiangyong, deputy director and professor of the Institute of International Studies at Tsinghua University.
