An article was released on March 8 that shows China pledging to defend each inch of its territory and eliminated any possible shred of compromise with Japan. Foreign Minister Wang Yi told a press conference that, “On the two issues of principle, history and territory, there is no room for compromise”. The relation between the two countries has plummeted since Japan’s purchase of the Diaoyu Islands, a purchase that China heavily protested.
Since 1894, Japan and China have had pretty strained diplomatic relations. However, in 1972, those relations were stabilized after reaching a common understanding and agreement on how to handle the issues of history, Taiwan, and the Daioyu Islands. Wang goes on to say that, “they are the precondition for the normalization of the diplomatic relations and the basis for a return to a friendly relationship. The recent comments and actions of the Japanese leader betrayed the spirit of 1972 and undermined the foundation of China-Japan relations”.
See the comments on Mitchell Brister’s blog post “Rising Tension between China and Japan” for some of my comments regarding this escalation of rhetoric
It seems as thought the populations of each country really don’t like each other. China is always trying to push their boundaries and throw their weight around, held in check by the US and other powers. Is there going to be military action taken by China or Japan against each other? Probably not. But it is something to keep an eye on.
It seems as thought the populations of each country really don’t like each other. China is always trying to push their boundaries and throw their weight around, held in check by the US and other powers. Is there going to be military action taken by China or Japan against each other? Probably not. But it is something to keep an eye on.
It’s not at all clear to me that “the two countries don’t like each other” – else why so many Chinese students in Japan, and Japanese studying China? Our own Prof Bai studied Japanese and worked for a Japanese company in China. We have opinion surveys in Japan that show veneration not hate of China and Chinese.
Rather all politics is local, and an insecure leadership in China has chosen to ignore the deals of their predecessors, and to foment student activism, who are not taught their own history in school and are surprisingly gullible in the face of specious government portrayals of their past. Be careful too in the “Japanese government bought” because that was also a function of domestic politics, not because the status of the islands as part of Japan was somehow in question. (The islands had been duly owned and registered from sometime in the 1800s as the property of a family who eventually relocated to Tokyo…there was an offer on the table to buy the islands from a party who wanted to use them to foster discord.)
this is almost the same article as: https://econ274.academic.wlu.edu/2014/01/things-heated-between-china-and-japan/
Please read my comment from the previous post.
China, Japan, and Korea have complicated history of “friendship(?).”