China and Japan celebrate their 40 years of ‘love-hate’ relations

China is moving to boost its ties with Japan, celebrating the 40th anniversary of a friendship treaty with Tokyo this week.

Xi Jinping, at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, is expected to visit Japan next year. Picture: AP

As China debates how to handle the trade war with the US, it is moving to boost its ties with Japan, celebrating the 40th anniversary of a friendship treaty with Tokyo this week with exchanges of congratulations between leaders.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said he and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe yesterday exchanged messages to mark the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship in 1978.

Mr Li said China wanted to work with Tokyo to “safeguard political foundations, deepen mutually beneficial co-operation and properly manage differences”.

Mr Abe said he was “very pleased to have Japan-China relations return to a normal path”, harking back to a visit by Mr Li to Japan in May, his first visit since becoming Premier in 2013.

Both sides noted they were looking forward to a visit by Mr Abe to Beijing before the end of the year. Mr Abe is known to be keen to visit the Chinese capital, but his trip will need to await his party’s leadership elections in September. While a date has not officially been set, it is widely expected to take place in October.

Relations between the two countries have long been strained by anti-Japanese feeling in China as a result of wartime atrocities and the disputed islands in the East China Sea, particularly the Diaoyu, or the Senkakus as they are known in Japan.

Like other countries in the ­region, including Australia, Japan has had to come to terms with China’s economy surpassing its own as the second-largest in the world and deal with its concerns over Beijing’s island-building in the South China Sea.

Some analysts describe it as a “love-hate” relationship.

But ties have been improving under Mr Abe over the past year: Mr Li’s visit was the first to Japan by a senior Chinese leader in eight years and Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to visit next year. On that yardstick alone, the relationship between Japan and China is a lot better than that between Australia and China.

At the same time, Mr Abe has been promoting the joint Japan, Australia, US and India grouping, known informally as “the Quad”, as a regional counterbalance to the rise of China.

While Japan will still be a close ally with the US, Donald Trump’s aggressive trade policies have added an incentive for Beijing to be more proactive with Tokyo.

To this end, Beijing recently moved to cancel an international seminar on “comfort women” — the subjugation by the Japanese Imperial Army of Chinese and ­Korean women as prostitutes during World War II — planned for this month at the Shanghai Normal University.

While the issue remains a sensitive one among Chinese, hosting the seminar would have risked stirring up anti-Japanese feelings at a time when Beijing knows it needs to have closer relations with major non-US nations.

When it does come, Mr Abe’s visit will be closely watched for his comments on Mr Xi’s Belt and Road initiative and China’s expanding role in the Asia-Pacific ­region.