Sino-Japanese ties at a '40-year low'

Sino-Japanese relations are now at their most strained since the resumption of diplomatic ties in 1972, researchers from China's best-known think tanks say.

"The wrong historical perspective and the tough diplomatic stance stubbornly adhered to by the Shinzo Abe administration have caused Japan's ties with China to move backward in the political area, which has also negatively affected ties in other fields," said Li Peilin, vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, at a symposium in Dalian, Liaoning province, over the weekend.

"In the context of an increased possibility of a military conflict in the increasingly complicated situation in the East China Sea, the question of how to break the current stalemate and help Sino-Japanese relations improve remains a very urgent research topic for Chinese scholars," Li said.

Jiang Ruiping, vice-president of China Foreign Affairs University, said the ongoing confrontation between China and Japan, the two largest economies in Asia, has seriously hampered otherwise-smooth East Asian cooperation and regional integration.

He added that Sino-Japanese relations currently are stuck in a conflict between their mutual benefit in economics but confrontation in the political arena.

Jiang said the two countries should learn from Franco-German cooperation in Europe and try to bring bilateral ties back on the track of benign interaction.

"Where Sino-Japanese ties will head in the future will be decided by which kind of political mentality, whether the win-win or the zero-sum mentality, Japan's Abe government will take toward China," said Liu Jiangyong, deputy director of the Institute of International Studies at Tsinghua University.

"It is too early to say that Japan will revive its prewar militarism, but the disclosed strategy of the Abe Cabinet regarding China as a military rival should remind China of the urgent need for maintaining its own and East Asian peace," Liu said.

The weekend symposium, attended by more than 200 experts and scholars, was held to commemorate the 120th anniversary of the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95.