New president Abdurrahman Wahid was careful to go to China only after visiting Southeast Asia, the U.S., Japan and the Mideast. They hope economic interdependence between China and Japan will underpin regional stability, as did Franco-German rapprochement in Europe after 1945. The analogy is false. It took two devastating global conflicts to teach the Germans that the cost of war outweighs all possible benefits. It's not clear that China believes this, especially in relation to Taiwan.
China also nurtures a deep sense of historical grievance with Japan.
Franco-German rapprochement was in any case only possible because NATO and American nuclear weapons deterred the Soviet bid for hegemony. A China bent on hegemony in East Asia will not be deterred by a Japan that relies on economic interdependence and pursues its three non-nuclear principles. Robyn Lim is professor of international politics at Hiroshima Shudo University.