Japanese Attitudes and Policies towards China in 1973

Abstract

The Tanaka visit to Peking in September 1972 and the subsequent opening of regular diplomatic relations between Japan and the Chinese People's Republic represented a turn of foreign policy which was strongly supported by most sections of Japanese public opinion. The policy of following the American lead in refusing de jure recogmtion to the government in Peking and confining diplomatic relations to the Chinese Nationalist regime in Taiwan had always been unpopular in Japan, on the Right as well as on the Left of the political spectrum, for, while the Left was influenced by sympathies for the social aims of Communist China and resentful at what was seen as the subservience of Japan to American imperialism, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was affected by the view prevailing in Japanese business circles that Japan was being kept out of a large and lucrative trade by conformity with a policy made in Washington, After the President of the United States had himself made the journey to Peking, there was no longer sufficient ground for the Japanese government to pursue a policy which the Americans themselves had repudiated, and there was even an opportunity for Japan to move ahead of the United States in conciliation with Peking, since the United States was still encumbered by a military alliance with Taiwan, as Japan was not. Thus Japan was able to open full diplomatic relations with Peking while the United States had to be content with a “liaison mission.” It remained to be seen, however, how the new Sino-Japanese relations would develop in terms of concrete agreements between the two countries and, on surveying the progress made over the year that has passed since Tanaka went to Peking, the actual results of the new policy must be reckoned some-what disappointing. There are, in fact, two considerable obstacles to the attainment of genuinely intimate and harmonious relations between Tokyo and Peking: one is the continuation of certain Japanese ties with Taiwan and the other is the Japanese effort, as part of the new so-called “balanced diplomacy,” to develop relations with the Soviet Union simultaneously with the approach to Peking.