Reconsidering Forty Years after Sino-Japanese Diplomatic Normalization

Abstract

Significantly informed by strategic considerations, the Sino-Japanese diplomatic normalization in 1972 was a side-product of the US-China rapprochement. Due to the speedy negotiations that lasted only five days, the bilateral relations remain fragile, non-institutionalized and personal character-oriented, leaving numbers of issues remain unresolved, such as the handling of the problems left by the previous Sino-Japanese War, the consolation to war victims, and the rebuilding of a long-term relationship. Attempts on cooperation and institutionalization between the two countries have been carried out in the 1980s and the 2000s respectively, but the relations significantly deteriorated thereafter due to the anti-Japanese demonstrations in 2005 and the fishing trawler collision incident near the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in September 2010. As the fierce anti-Japanese demonstrations erupted in China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands territorial dispute in September 2012, the Sino-Japanese relations reached its nadir since the diplomatic normalization of the two countries. This paper discusses forty years of transformations of Sino-Japanese relations, issues that is unresolved after the 1972 negotiations and attempts on institutionalization of cooperative frameworks. In the addendum, this paper also analyzes the anti-Japanese demonstrations in September 2012 and suggests three emergency proposals to avoid the two countries from entering a “new Cold War”.