On The Strategies To Develop Sino-Japan Relations

Sino-Japan communication has a long history. However, since the reestablishment of diplomatic relation, Sino-Japan ties have always been unstable, and such kind of situation continues. As one of China's most important international relations, the developing situations of Sino-Japan relations have been playing a critical role in fulfilling China's strategic goal of"peaceful rising".At present, Sino-Japanese economic ties are not heating up along with cold political ties. Since Junichiro Koizumi took office as the Prime Minister, the Japanese government implemented a series of policies to the detrimental of Sino-Japan friendly relations and made it degenerate gradually. However, the bilateral relations in economy and trade gained momentum. Thus, heating economy and cold political ties came into being though bilateral trade slowed down. After Koizumi resigned, the pace of bilateral trade gradually slowed down. Later, Shinzo Abe and Yasuo Fukuda governments took measures respectively to improve Sino-Japan ties and the political relationship between China and Japan gradually turned better.Multiple reasons result in"cold politics and heating economy"or"warm politics and lukewarm economy"between China and Japan. On the one hand, with regard to positive factors affecting the development of Sino-Japan relations, there exists a non-governmental driving force from within both countries to develop Sino-Japan ties; both governments take strategies to develop the bilateral relations; the mutual economic dependence for both countries is ever-increasing; the bilateral cooperation in regional or international economic organizations is also desired, and so on. On the other hand, negative factors include"China Threat", different ideologies, historical cognition, Taiwan issue and East China Sea issue, etc. The underlying problems lie in the misunderstanding of china's strategy of"peaceful rising", Japan's dream of becoming a politically powerful country, the escalating nationalism in two countries, and US influence, etc.Sino-Japan ties are supposed to be improved in an all-round way. Politically, both governments should establish mutual trust, and the Chinese government should make full use of the economic measures to exert influence on Japan's policies towards china. At the same time, various media should be effectively utilized to publicize China's policies towards Japan, and the bilateral cooperation in mutual-benefit fields should be strengthened. On the level of business, enterprises in China should cooperate with their counterparts in Japan, so as to affect Japan's policies towards China through its enterprises. In addition, non-governmental cooperation between both countries should be encouraged so as to lead nationalism in both countries towards expected direction.As for the prospect of Sino-Japan ties, Junichiro Koizumi government, in the short run, may abandon its containment policy towards China and expand the exchange and cooperation with China in economy and trade, national defense, environment, cultural exchange, etc., which will, to some extent, definitely improve the Sino-Japan political relationship, thus pushing forward the economic and trade relationship, but the pace of development will continuously slow down. In the medium and long run, Sino-Japan relationship will improve on the whole, but there is a long way to go before China and Japan become true strategic partners.To sum up, cooperated, we profit; conflicted, we devastated. It is the golden principle which guides Sino-Japan ties. It is believed that only mature and stable Sino-Japan relationship benefits the long-term development for both countries.