Potential of Sino-Japanese ties

New Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama will make his first visit to China today. His visit follows an epochal change in the Japanese political landscape. In the Aug 30 general election, the Liberal Democratic Party, which had almost ruled Japan since 1955 without interruption, suffered a fiasco, while the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which had been an opposition party for 13 years, won in a landslide. Chinese people want to know how the momentous change will impact them and what the new prime minister and his cabinet will bring to the Sino-Japanese relations.

The change in attitude of Japan's new administration to China has been somewhat positive. The change, however, is not revolutionary. The basic framework and the structure of the Sino-Japanese relations will hardly undergo sweeping change.

It is difficult to describe the current Sino-Japanese relations with a simple "good" or "bad." On the one hand, relations between the two Asian giants are very close, especially on economic and cultural fronts. On the other hand, thorny problems remain, particularly in the political and security realms in addition to the feeling among the masses toward each other's nationals.