To Judge Sino-Japanese Economic & Trade Relationship Through "Threat From China" Theory And "Need Of China" Theory

Japan, boasting of its miraculous recovery from the damage of the Second World War and its leading role among Asian economic forces for so long, has been dragged into an economic swamp and suffered greatly from its weak domestic consumption during the period from 1990 to 2000, which is the so-called "lost ten year"; While China, has remained steady economic growth and higher domestic demand ever since Mr. Deng Xiao Ping's world-famous trip to the South China. Under the pressure of Chinese economic soar, "Threat from China" theory began to arise in Japan around 2001 and increase to an intensive extent afterwards. This kind of emotional tone not only causes a lot of troubles to the political relations between China and Japan, but also has dark influence over their economic and trade relations.During recent years situation has been changed dramatically. Japanese news and medias began to change tones from "Threat from China" theory to "Global Factory", "Need of China" theory as the Japanese economic conditions have been improved thanks to the pull caused by the Chinese economic growth. Either Chinese or Japanese economists and politicians, can think moderately over the issues concerning economic relations between the two countries, with the unresolved and unforgettable hatred buried deeply under their history lingering in their mind. This results in the frequent exertion of some extreme opinions from Japan and especially lack of logical understanding of Chinese economy. We can see this quite clearly from the over-one-night changes from "The Collapse of China" theory, "Threat from China" theory to "Need of China" theory. In fact these theories from one extreme to another have had negative effect on many trading companies of the two countries, putting up direct or indirect barriers to their long-term and steady economic cooperative relationship.Based on the former studies of "Hollow Industry", "Threat from China" theory and "Need of China" theory, this paper tries to reveal the truth underneath the "Threat from China" theory from the angle of analyzing trading and direct investment between the two countries, especially through analyzing their structure and development trail, so as to find out the backgrounds and reasons of change in these two theories. In its ending part, it concludes the Sino-Japanese economic and trade relationship to be a mutually supplementary one by referring to trade and investment statistics of the two countries in the past, and expresses personal view on their future development strategy in the fields of economy and trade.