Meeting of minds to resolve differences

Beijing-Tokyo forum focuses on stable track to berrer relations

The Japanese side was enormously relieved on Oct 25 to find that all their representatives were in Beijing on time to attend the Beijing-Tokyo Forum. Luckily, typhoon Francisco was a little too late to delay their flights to Beijing.

They were eager to meet and talk with their Chinese counterparts on the thorny issues of China-Japan relations and other possible storms in the making.

In Tokyo in the summer of 2006, the Beijing-Tokyo Forum served as a platform for Shinzo Abe to send a positive signal to China before his first premiership. His predecessor Junichiro Koizumi's frequent visits to the Yasukuni Shrine had frozen China-Japan relations during his tenure.

Shortly after taking office, Abe visited China in December 2006, breaking the ice between the two countries. After that, the relationship fared well until the Japanese government illegally "nationalized" China's Diaoyu Islands in September 2012.

Insightful people of both nations were pinning high hopes, again, on this year's forum - a platform for government officials, scholars and diplomats to discuss important issues - when bilateral relations have sunk to a new low, mostly due to the row over the Diaoyu Islands.

However, a breakthrough was impossible at the Beijing-Tokyo Forum on Oct 26-27, as Prime Minister Abe denies there is a territorial dispute between China and Japan.

Those who wish ties to return to normal, nevertheless, still attached great importance to "track 2" discussions for solutions to breaking the impasse.

On Oct 23, Beijing's observation of the China-Japan Peace and Friendship Treaty, which took effect 35 years ago, inspired both sides to think hard about the origin of today's bilateral relations, and this should be the best place to find answers to the current dilemma.

When China and Japan restored diplomatic relations and signed that treaty, they agreed to seek common ground while reserving differences, and resort to peaceful solutions to settle their disputes.

But when the Japanese government does not honor the consensus on the territorial dispute with China, bilateral relations cannot move forward, and worse, will go backwards.

This is an apparent reversal of previous Japanese policy on China.

"If nobody is willing to give in, there will be no way out," Xu Dunxin, a member of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' foreign policy advisory group, and Chinese ambassador to Japan from 1993 to 1998, told the forum. "So we should listen to the other side and put ourselves in their shoes. In doing so, we will know each other better and try to find solutions."

Both Chinese and Japanese participants had a cool, clear mind on the situation, and expect the stalemate will continue for a while.

"Rome was not built in a day," said Wu Jinan, researcher with Shanghai Institute of International Studies. "China and Japan need to open their eyes to appreciate the other side's merits and advantages."

On Oct 27, the forum participants agreed that a stable China-Japan relationship is in the interests of Asia and the world, as well as their two countries. Also, they said the two nations should be committed to peaceful means of settling disputes and problems.

They agreed that shared interests should be maintained, unstable relations improved, and that the deteriorating situation and confrontational feelings Chinese and Japanese harbor toward one other should be brought under control.

In the context of the territorial standoff, the priority is to conduct negotiations, achieve a settlement through peaceful means, and establish crisis-management and long-term mechanisms to help avoid accidental friction and even military conflict.

Former Japanese prime minister Yasuo Fukuda said building a strategically beneficial relationship between China and Japan is of great significance. "The two countries should find a solution to the problems in their ties," he said.

Zhao Qizheng, former chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and former minister of the State Council Information Office of the national consultative body, took the Beijing consensus as representing that of the majority of people in China and Japan.

"The consensus should become a driving force in the relationship to create better conditions," Zhao said. "I hope that it will turn into concerted action."

Though more than 90 percent of Chinese and Japanese people have negative feelings toward each other, more than 70 percent wished to see a better relationship, according to an opinion poll in August by China Daily and Japan's non-profit organization The Genron NPO.

China Daily and The Genron NPO began the annual Beijing-Tokyo Forum in 2005, when China-Japan relations were strained by then Japanese prime minister Koizumi's frequent visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine.

China, Japan and South Korea have launched a joint study on history. This could serve as an example to apply to the territorial issue, on which China and Japan could cooperate on research. The two countries could also cooperate in many other areas, such as energy and environmental protection.

We anticipate that cooperation and discussions such as the Beijing-Tokyo Forum will help change China-Japan relations from ice to nice.

The author is China Daily's Tokyo bureau chief. Contact the writer at caihong@chinadaily.com.cn.

(China Daily Africa Weekly 11/01/2013 page10)