The Status Quo, Dilemma And Future Of Sino-Japan Friendship Cities

Against the backdrop of a steadily developing global civil society, international relations are no longer defined merely by the diplomacy between state governments. With the perceptions of other countries’ citizens increasingly important to the success of a nation’s foreign policy, it has become important for governments to positively develop their public diplomacy as well. However, given the limits with which a central government can shape its own nation’s image among foreign civil societies, the international interactions of local governments, particularly city-to-city exchanges, must be viewed as an important component of a country’s overall public diplomacy efforts. City-to-city relations are an effective way to conduct public diplomacy, offering the possibility of both greater flexibility as well as consistency in the relations between citizens and local governments of two countries.This study examines the application of city-to-city exchanges between China and Japan, two countries whose official relations have frequently been characterized by friction and disagreement. The study finds that despite periodic high-level diplomatic conflicts between these two countries, city-to-city exchanges have provided a measure of dependably positive relations and have contributed to favorable attitudes regarding each other within both countries’ civil societies.