According to the South China Morning Post, Japanese Ambassador to China Kenji Kanesaki pointed out at the Peace and Development Forum held at Tsinghua University on July 6 that improving China-Japan relations should start with increasing "honest" dialogue so that the two sides can find a common basis for dialogue.
China cracks down on anti-Japanese speech on the Internet. Citizens pay attention to the case of Hu Youping being summoned.
Sino-Japanese relations have been at a low point in recent years due to historical reasons between the two countries, territorial disputes in the East China Sea, China's hype about the Fukushima nuclear pollution issue, and the recent attack on Japanese in Suzhou.
Ambassador Kim Jong-un, who will take office in December 2023, made such suggestions for the future improvement of Sino-Japanese relations based on his long-term experience in coordinating Japan-US relations. He said at the meeting, "The United States and Japan are very close allies, and our relationship is very close, but privately, we have a lot of negotiations. I was in charge of coordinating Japan-US economic affairs in Tokyo. Japan and the United States are essentially different, and the interests of the United States and Japan are also different, so many different differences behind the scenes need to be controlled by different departments, but we control them very well."
"The same should be true for China and Japan. We should have honest dialogue and find common ground," he pointed out.
Since the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Japan 52 years ago, the relationship has always been a mixture of hot and cold. China is Japan's largest trading partner. China and Japan once believed that economic and trade exchanges could bring better political relations to both sides. However, last year's bilateral trade volume fell by 10.7% over the same period of the previous year, and the growth of direct investment by companies in the two countries also slowed down.
In August last year, China banned the import of Japanese seafood on the grounds of nuclear contamination, which not only caused a decline in bilateral trade, but also further damaged diplomatic relations. Then, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and US President Biden reached a security agreement in April this year, pledging to jointly "maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait", which again aroused China's dissatisfaction.
Ambassador Jinshan pointed out, "We all know that relations between governments can sometimes become difficult, and there may even be many setbacks in China-Japan relations, but cooperation and exchanges between local governments can have an impact and thus improve bilateral relations."
While both China and Japan were seeking to improve relations, on the afternoon of June 24, an incident occurred in Suzhou where local citizens attacked a Japanese school bus. The suspect attempted to board the school bus and attack the children on board, but was stopped by the school bus guide Hu Youping and failed. However, Hu Youping eventually died from multiple stab wounds.
As the incident happened at a time when China was seeking to attract Japanese companies to further invest in China, the head of the Japanese delegation, Yohei Kono, who was invited to visit China on July 1, specifically asked China to find out the motive of the crime and whether the suspect was targeting Japanese people. He Lifeng, the Chinese Vice Premier who met with the delegation, stressed that the Suzhou attack on Japanese people should not affect Sino-Japanese relations.
At the seminar on July 6, Ambassador Kim Shan pointed out that preliminary investigations showed that the case was a random crime and not targeted at the Japanese, but the Japanese side is still conducting in-depth investigations into why the incident occurred and the reasons behind it so that it can explain to the Japanese people in the future.
In addition, Ambassador Jinshan further called on China to restore the preferential measures of visa-free short-term travel to China for Japanese as soon as possible. China has cancelled the preferential measures of visa-free travel for many countries due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but has restored them for Singapore and Brunei. Kono, who was invited to lead the visit of Japanese corporate executives, also made the same call, but he also pointed out that many cases of Japanese being detained in China have caused Japanese companies to hesitate to invest in China, and China should increase the transparency of the interpretation and implementation of the "Anti-Espionage Law".
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