Sino File | China and Japan are still best of frenemies, 40 years on from Treaty of Peace and Friendship

It is as true today as it has been throughout history: China and Japan have as many reasons to be friends as to be enemies. And that is why, in the decades since they established diplomatic ties in 1972, their relationship has seen as many highs as it has lows.

The enactment of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Japan and China on October 23, 1978, was one such high. Ending almost a century of enmity, it heralded a new era of relations, and was the culmination of a historic meeting in Tokyo between China’s then-paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, and Japan’s then-prime minister, Takeo Fukuda.

The goodwill progressed further when, in November 1983, Chinese Communist Party Secretary Hu Yaobang and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone agreed to establish the New Japan-China Friendship Committee for the 21st Century.

Underpinning these accords were ancient bonds and similarities – geographical proximity, shared customs, culture and religion as well as a history of bilateral exchanges stretching back to the Tang dynasty. They were also based on shared geopolitical interests: both nations saw the Soviet Union as their chief threat during the cold war era.

The friendship gained new momentum when Deng began opening up China in the early 1980s, a time when China was sorely in need of Japanese funding and technology. Tokyo’s generosity during this period was partly due to the chasm in economic development that had opened between the two neighbours. Japan was an industrial power, while China was still crawling out from its third-world cave.

But its generosity had another, darker, aspect. It was driven at least in part by a desire to make amends for the immense suffering of the Chinese during the Japanese invasion in the second world war.