Mar 31 (East Asia Forum) - Japan is busily laying the groundwork for a state visit by Xi Jinping, in what has now become a roughly once-in-a-decade occurrence. The last visit was derailed by COVID-19.
Japan’s relations with China deteriorated sharply during the pandemic at official and public levels. While there have been steady diplomatic gains with Beijing by Shinzo Abe’s prime ministerial successors Yoshihide Suga, Fumio Kishida and now incumbent Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, relations between the two societies are proving more of a challenge.
Around 90 per cent of Japanese people surveyed by Genron NPO have had a poor impression of China for the last decade. The same survey shows that the impression that Chinese people have of Japan has deteriorated in the past year. Since 2017, around half to two-thirds of Chinese people had a poor impression of Japan — but that jumped from 63 per cent in 2023 to 87.7 per cent of respondents in 2024.
It’s difficult to have a stable Northeast Asia and manage relations between the two Asian giants without the ballast of people-to-people links. In early 2025 both countries launched initiatives to boost those ties.
In this week’s lead article, from the new edition of the East Asia Forum Quarterly, Yumi Aoyama argues that ‘[t]he Ishiba administration’s foreign policy aims to pursue equality and autonomy in the Japan–US alliance without distancing itself from the United States, at the same time as seeking to improve China–Japan relations without weakening deterrence against China’.
This balancing act between deterrence and diplomacy has come to characterise Japan’s foreign policy toward China amid the spectre of Beijing’s rise. Under the Abe government, there was a dawning recognition that Japan’s alliance with the United States was no longer capable of achieving deterrence alone. Recognition of this gave impetus to Abe’s Indo-Pacific policy and its attendant norms (the ‘Free and Open Indo Pacific’) and institutions (the Quad). The aim was not to reduce dependence on the US alliance, but to strengthen the United States’ security architecture in the region.
Aoyama worries that the Chinese leadership perceives the Ishiba administration to be ‘deviating from Abe’s pro-US stance and reducing its hedging against China’ but that this will prove to be ‘a critical miscalculation’ on Beijing’s part.
In any case, both Ishiba and Xi appear to believe that the time is ripe to steer the bilateral relationship on a more positive trajectory. Doubtlessly, this has been reinforced by the chaotic overture of Donald Trump’s second term.
In addition to the many high-level developments between Beijing and Tokyo, the two leaders have attempted to spur people-to-people exchanges. To this end, as Aoyama explains, ‘China has reinstated a visa-free regime for short-term Japanese visitors, allowing stays of up to 30 days. Reciprocally, Japan has announced the introduction of 10-year multiple-entry tourist visas for Chinese travellers.’
These diplomatic initiatives, however, may not be sufficient to repair the deterioration of a relationship that has appeared to be in structural decline since the onset of the pandemic.
Traditionally, the track II level of the relationship, which encompasses experts on China–Japan relations in both countries, has remained robust in the face of diplomatic turbulence. It has also served to mitigate turbulence from other shocks to an extent. Yet track II relations have themselves become strained in the past few years with few China experts in Japan willing to visit Beijing. That’s no wonder when in the past decade 17 Japanese nationals have been detained on suspicion of espionage or other charges.
There are far fewer Japanese businesspeople and academics visiting China now. And Australia has become the home to the second largest community of expatriate Japanese after the United States, having overtaken China — where the number of Japanese residents has dropped below 100,000 for the first time in many years.
Aspirations to improve the bilateral relationship will not be easy. What would seem to be required is a major reconception of the relationship and the base of common interests on which a constructive partnership can be built. The response to Donald Trump’s America provides an incentive to reboot Japan–China ties. But that is hardly a viable foundation for cooperation given the nature of Japan’s strategic relationship with Washington and the persistent anxieties about the risks that a more politically assertive and militarily advanced China presents to Japan’s future security.
Those anxieties need not, and should not, get in the way of cooperation on globally important policy challenges where cooperation yields benefits for both countries and positive spillovers for everybody else.
What especially begs for Chinese–Japanese cooperation is common cause on climate change and energy transition and keeping the global trading system open in the face of Trump’s onslaught.
Today we also launch Issue 1 of our 17th Volume of East Asia Forum Quarterly on ‘A Single Green Market in Asia’.
In this issue of the Quarterly we explore ideas for creating a green trade bloc in East Asia, and cementing and deepening cooperation between East Asia, China and Europe in the development of common financial frameworks for green investment as a complement to working together on keeping trade and investment open.
East Asia (Japan and China included) has the leverage to make a difference to global outcomes if it can move swiftly on both these fronts.
