Will the China-Japan Rapprochement Hold in 2021?

While 2020 proved to be a tumultuous year for Chinese diplomacy, China-Japan relations represented an unusual bright spot. The key questions for 2021 are whether this rapprochement will carry over and if Chinese leader Xi Jinping will make his long anticipated visit to Japan, a move that could solidify a more stable trajectory for the bilateral relationship.

At the close of last year, the two countries’ foreign ministers emphasized the importance of sustaining stable relations and enhancing mutual trust at their meeting in late November. Moreover, at the opening of the 16th Beijing-Tokyo Forum the same month, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said “friendship between the two peoples has always been an important cornerstone of China-Japan relations.” In a separate meeting, new Japanese Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide told Wang, “a stable relationship between the two countries is important not only for Japan and China but also for the region and the international community.”

And although it would be inaccurate to describe Sino-Japanese relations as copacetic – not least because of historical legacies from World War II and ongoing maritime tensions between the two Northeast Asian neighbors – these latest characterizations are a far cry away from the hostility that simmered between Beijing and Tokyo just a few years ago.

Economics are a clear driver for improving relations. China and Japan rank as the world’s number two and three largest economies. Moreover, they each occupy important positions as top trade partners. Japan is the second largest source of imports to China, behind South Korea, and the third largest destination for Chinese exports, behind the United States and Hong Kong. Meanwhile, China’s own economic growth and increased buying power have made it one of Japan’s most important trade partners. Japan’s top import source is China, representing a 23 percent share of total imports (totaling $169 billion) in 2019. China accounts for 19 percent of Japan’s exports, a close second to the United States. The two neighbors were also among the 15 Asia-Pacific signatories of the recently concluded Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), whose implementation is expected to cut tariffs and put in place common rules on intellectual property and e-commerce.

Trade is not the only significant dimension of economic exchange. The number of Chinese tourists to Japan has increased throughout the 21st century. In 2019, overseas visitors from China accounted for 30 percent of all foreign tourists with more than 9.5 million travelers, up from 350,000 in 2000, according to data from the Japan National Tourism Organization. Japanese tourists are also a top source of overseas visitors and tourists to China, ranking in the top five in recent years.

In the face of economic woes brought on by the spread of the coronavirus, Beijing and Tokyo made incremental diplomatic improvements over the past year. Late in 2020, China and Japan agreed to restart business travel that had been halted by the pandemic.

In December 2020, China’s defense minister met with his Japanese counterpart and the two agreed to work to set up a hotline between the officials, although no timeline was set. The two countries launched an air and maritime communication mechanism in 2018 to avoid accidental clashes, but a military hotline, a pillar of the scheme, has yet to be established.

Abe Shinzo’s resignation and the leadership transition in Japan does not appear to have knocked Sino-Japanese relationship off course. Still, although new Japanese Prime Minister Suga signaled the importance of stability between the neighbors early after entering office, he opted to make his first international trips to Vietnam and Indonesia in October 2020.

During his tenure, Xi Jinping has only traveled once to Japan, to Osaka for the 2019 G-20 Summit. At his last meeting with Abe in December 2019, the then-Japanese prime minister stated, “We want to build a relationship that is suitable for a new era for Japan and China.” For his part, Xi was expected to undertake a long-awaited state visit to Japan in April 2020. And yet, as with most events of 2020, the trip was disrupted by the spread of the coronavirus. Despite attempts to reschedule the Chinese leader’s trip, the current status of his first state visit to Japan remains unknown.

In addition to an uptick in high profile meetings between leaders, both China and Japan have recently replaced their respective envoys. Beijing appointed Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Kong Xuanyou as ambassador to Japan in April 2019, succeeding Cheng Yonghua who had held the position for nearly a decade. Kong came into the post with prior diplomatic experience with the neighboring country, including his first diplomatic posting in Osaka in the mid 1980s. Tarumi Hideo was appointed as Japan’s new envoy to China in fall 2020. Tarumi, of the “China school” in Japan’s diplomatic core, has been credited with helping to resolve feuds between the two countries. In his first interview with Chinese media, Tarumi pledged to bolster the flow and quality of communication and called for the two sides to “explore as many areas of cooperation as possible.” The appointments of these envoys, with their expertise, suggest an investment on the part of Beijing and Tokyo to sustain their newfound stability.

Despite some tangible progress on the diplomatic front, the respective publics have been slower to soften their stances toward one another. The two countries have annually surveyed their  populations to trace their perceptions of two-way ties since 2005. In the past two years, Chinese favorable impressions of Japan continued on an upward trajectory, climbing into the high 40 percent. The Japanese public’s impression, however, soured even more from 2019 to 2020, inching up five points from 84.7 percent to 89.7 percent. Additionally, Japanese legislators pushed for extensions to visas for Hong Kongers and the imposition of sanctions in response to the Hong Kong national security law approved by Beijing.

Japan balances a wide range of challenges when it comes to its relationship with China. Its alliance with the United States shapes the backdrop of broader security concerns in the region.

Simultaneously, despite domestic antipathy toward China, there remains an enduring sense that relations with China will be influential for Japan.

As Narushige Michishita, director of the Security and International Studies Program at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo, said, “Japan is basically competing with China while cooperating with it. We are playing those two games at the same time.” The next two years are likely to be significant. In 2021, Tokyo is slated to host the postponed Olympic Games and China celebrates the centennial of the Chinese Communist Party. The following year, Beijing and Tokyo are set to commemorate 50 years of formal diplomatic relations. With these events and anniversaries to come, coupled with a shared desire to reinvigorate the global economy and recover from the pandemic’s hit, the two northeast Asian powers have clear incentives to maintain their commitment to smoother relations.