China–Japan relations

Based on Wikipedia: China–Japan relations

In September 2012, the Japanese government made what seemed like a mundane real estate transaction: it purchased three small, uninhabited islands from a private Japanese citizen. The purchase price was modest. The islands had no permanent residents, no natural resources worth extracting, and no strategic military installations. Yet this simple property transfer triggered the worst diplomatic crisis between China and Japan in decades, sparking mass protests across Chinese cities, freezing billions of dollars in trade, and bringing two of the world's largest economies to the brink of military confrontation.

How did a few rocky outcrops in the East China Sea become so explosively contentious? The answer lies in a relationship spanning over two thousand years—one marked by profound cultural exchange, devastating warfare, and unresolved grievances that continue to shape geopolitics today.

The Student Becomes the Teacher

For most of recorded history, the cultural relationship between China and Japan flowed in one direction: from the Asian mainland to the Japanese archipelago. China gave Japan its writing system. The elegant characters that Japanese children still learn in school today are borrowed from Chinese, adapted and modified over centuries but fundamentally rooted in the pictographic system developed on the continent thousands of years ago.

But writing was just the beginning.

Buddhism arrived in Japan via China and Korea, transforming Japanese spirituality and leaving behind thousands of temples that still dot the landscape. Chinese architectural principles shaped how the Japanese built their palaces and shrines. Chinese philosophy, particularly Confucianism with its emphasis on social hierarchy and filial piety, became woven into the fabric of Japanese society. Even Japanese cuisine bears the influence of Chinese cooking techniques and ingredients.

This cultural debt was not controversial. For centuries, educated Japanese looked to China as the wellspring of civilization, much as medieval Europeans regarded ancient Rome. Chinese scholars were respected, Chinese texts were studied, and the Chinese imperial model of governance was admired, if not always emulated.

Then came the nineteenth century, and everything changed.

When the West Came Knocking

In the 1850s, American warships under Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Japanese waters and demanded, at cannon-point, that Japan open itself to foreign trade. The Japanese had maintained a policy of near-total isolation for over two hundred years. Suddenly, they were forced to confront a world where Western powers had developed technologies—steam engines, modern artillery, industrial manufacturing—that made traditional Asian military forces look obsolete.

Japan's response was remarkable. In 1868, a group of reformers overthrew the old feudal government in what became known as the Meiji Restoration. The new leaders embarked on a crash program of modernization, sending students to study in Europe and America, building railroads and factories, and creating a modern military modeled on Western lines. "Rich country, strong army" became the national slogan.

Japan looked at China and saw a cautionary tale.

The Qing dynasty, which had ruled China since 1644, was visibly struggling. Western powers had humiliated China in the Opium Wars, forcing the Chinese to accept unequal treaties and cede territory like Hong Kong. A massive civil war, the Taiping Rebellion, had killed tens of millions. To Japanese modernizers, China represented everything they wanted to avoid: a civilization that had failed to adapt and was being carved up by foreign powers like a melon.

The Japanese began to view their ancient cultural mentor with something new: contempt.

From Student to Conqueror

In 1894, Japan and China went to war over influence in Korea. It was not much of a contest. Japan's modernized military crushed the Chinese forces. The Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed in 1895, forced China to cede Taiwan to Japan, pay a massive indemnity, and recognize Korea as independent from Chinese influence. This was a stunning reversal. For the first time in recorded history, Japan had defeated China in a major war.

Japan's ambitions did not stop there.

In 1931, Japanese military officers staged a false flag attack on a railway in Manchuria—the northeastern region of China—and used it as a pretext to invade. Within months, Japan controlled an area larger than France and Germany combined. They established a puppet state called Manchukuo, installing the last Qing emperor as a figurehead ruler while Japanese advisors held real power.

In 1937, full-scale war erupted. Japanese forces swept through eastern China, capturing major cities including Shanghai and the capital, Nanjing. What happened in Nanjing remains one of the most controversial and painful episodes in the entire history of East Asia.

The Wounds That Won't Heal

Over a period of six weeks beginning in December 1937, Japanese troops in Nanjing committed mass atrocities against the civilian population. The exact death toll remains disputed, with estimates ranging from tens of thousands to over three hundred thousand. Chinese government figures put the number at 300,000 dead. Japanese historians have published lower estimates, and a small fringe denies the massacre occurred at all.

This is not merely an academic dispute. It is a wound that continues to poison relations between the two countries to this day.

The Nanjing Massacre, as the Chinese call it—or the Nanjing Incident, as some Japanese sources prefer—was not the only atrocity committed during the war. Unit 731, a covert Japanese biological and chemical warfare research unit based in Manchuria, conducted experiments on living prisoners, including vivisection without anesthesia. The unit was responsible for spreading plague and other diseases in Chinese cities, killing an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 people.

The war lasted until Japan's surrender in August 1945, following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By then, an estimated 15 to 20 million Chinese had died, the majority of them civilians. China regained all the territory Japan had taken, including Taiwan and Manchuria.

But the end of the war did not bring reconciliation.

Two Chinas, One Japan

In 1949, the Chinese Civil War ended with communist forces under Mao Zedong victorious on the mainland. The defeated Nationalist government fled to Taiwan, where it continued to claim to be the legitimate government of all China. The world now had two governments claiming to represent China: the People's Republic of China on the mainland and the Republic of China on Taiwan.

Japan, now occupied by American forces and rebuilt as a democracy, faced a choice. Which China should it recognize?

For over two decades, Japan maintained official diplomatic relations with Taiwan while maintaining only informal ties with the mainland. This was partly ideological—Japan's postwar government was firmly anti-communist—and partly practical. The United States, Japan's occupier and later ally, recognized Taiwan as the legitimate Chinese government and expected its allies to do the same.

This changed in 1972, when American President Richard Nixon made his famous visit to Beijing, signaling that the United States was ready to engage with communist China. Japan quickly followed suit.

The Ice Breaks

In September 1972, Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka flew to Beijing. The visit culminated in a joint communiqué that normalized diplomatic relations between Japan and the People's Republic of China. Japan acknowledged that Taiwan was part of China and switched its official diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing.

The communiqué addressed the painful history between the two countries in characteristically diplomatic language. Japan stated that it was "keenly conscious of the responsibility for the serious damage that Japan caused in the past to the Chinese people through war." China, for its part, renounced its demand for war reparations.

This was a practical compromise. Both sides wanted better relations. Both sides were nervous about the Soviet Union, which had troops massed on China's northern border. Neither side wanted to let historical grievances prevent cooperation against a common threat.

Six years later, in 1978, the two countries signed a formal Treaty of Peace and Friendship. The treaty included a clause opposing "hegemony"—diplomatic code for Soviet expansion. China had pushed hard for this language; Japan had initially resisted, not wanting to antagonize Moscow. The final text represented a compromise that satisfied both parties.

The Golden Age

The 1980s and 1990s represented a high point in China-Japan relations. Japan was an economic superpower, the world's second-largest economy after the United States. China, under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, had abandoned Maoist ideology and was opening up to foreign investment and trade.

Japanese companies poured money into China. Japanese technology helped modernize Chinese factories. Japanese consumers bought Chinese goods. The relationship was not without friction—China ran a persistent trade deficit with Japan, and there were periodic disputes over history—but the overall trajectory was positive.

Key moments during this period signaled genuine progress. In 1992, Japanese Emperor Akihito visited China—the first visit by a Japanese emperor in history. The symbolism was profound. The Japanese emperor, once worshipped as a living god and the figurehead of the empire that had devastated China, was now making a gesture of reconciliation.

In 1995, Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama went further. He issued what became known as the Murayama Statement, an official apology acknowledging that Japan had caused "tremendous damage and suffering" through its "colonial rule and aggression." The statement was not universally popular in Japan—some conservatives viewed it as unnecessarily self-flagellating—but it was warmly received in China.

Japanese prime ministers visited the Marco Polo Bridge, where the full-scale Sino-Japanese War had begun in 1937, and the nearby museum documenting Chinese resistance. These gestures suggested that Japan was finally coming to terms with its past.

The Shrine That Divides

And then there is Yasukuni.

Yasukuni Shrine, located in central Tokyo, is a Shinto religious site that memorializes Japan's war dead. Nearly 2.5 million souls are enshrined there, including soldiers who died fighting for Japan from the 1860s through 1945. In Shinto belief, those memorialized at Yasukuni become kami—spirits worthy of reverence.

The problem is that among those 2.5 million names are fourteen Class A war criminals convicted by the postwar Tokyo Tribunal, including General Hideki Tojo, the wartime prime minister. These men were enshrined in 1978, a decision made by Yasukuni's head priest without public announcement.

When Japanese politicians visit Yasukuni, they claim to be paying respects to the ordinary soldiers who died for their country—a practice that would be unremarkable in most nations. But critics in China and South Korea see something different. They see Japanese leaders honoring the architects of aggressive war and colonial occupation.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who served from 2001 to 2006, visited Yasukuni six times during his tenure. Each visit provoked furious protests from Beijing. Koizumi insisted he was paying respects to the war dead, not honoring war criminals specifically. Chinese officials refused to accept this distinction.

The visits illustrated a fundamental asymmetry in how the two countries remember the war. In China, the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression is a foundational national narrative, proof of Chinese suffering and resilience. Museums, monuments, and annual commemorations keep the memory alive. In Japan, the war is more ambiguous—a national tragedy, certainly, but also a source of shame that many would prefer not to dwell upon. What looks like honoring the fallen from one perspective looks like whitewashing atrocities from another.

Cold Politics, Hot Economics

During the Koizumi years, a phrase entered the diplomatic vocabulary: "cold politics, hot economics." Even as the political relationship froze, trade continued to boom. Japanese companies depended on Chinese factories. Chinese consumers bought Japanese cars and electronics. Both economies had grown so intertwined that neither could afford to let political disputes interrupt commerce.

This phrase captured something important about the relationship: it was both indispensable and intractable. The two countries needed each other economically. They could not resolve their historical disputes. So they learned to live with the contradiction.

The economic dimension only grew more significant over time. In 2005, China displaced the United States to become Japan's largest trading partner. By 2024, bilateral trade would reach $292.6 billion annually. Chinese tourists flooded into Japan, becoming the largest source of international visitors. Chinese students enrolled in Japanese universities. The human and commercial connections multiplied even as the political relationship remained strained.

The Balance Shifts

In 2010, something happened that would have seemed unthinkable a generation earlier: China's economy surpassed Japan's in total size. Japan had been the world's second-largest economy since 1968. Now it was third, behind the United States and China.

The reversal was not merely symbolic. It reflected fundamental shifts in relative power.

Japan's economy had stagnated following the collapse of its asset bubble in the early 1990s. What economists called the "Lost Decade" stretched into two lost decades. Population aging and decline further darkened the outlook. Japan remained wealthy and technologically advanced, but it was no longer growing.

China, meanwhile, had maintained extraordinary growth rates for three decades. Its economy had expanded nearly forty-fold since 1978. Its military budget grew commensurately. By 2012, China's total economic output was 1.4 times larger than Japan's.

This shift fundamentally altered the dynamics of the relationship. For decades, Japan had been the dominant economic power in Asia, with China as a developing country that needed Japanese investment and technology. Now the positions were reversing. China increasingly saw itself as the natural leader of Asia, reclaiming a historical centrality that had been interrupted by Western imperialism and Japanese aggression. Japan found itself dealing with a neighbor that was no longer weaker but rapidly growing stronger.

The Islands Nobody Lives On

Which brings us back to those uninhabited islands.

The Senkaku Islands—called the Diaoyu Islands by China—are a cluster of five small islands and three rocks in the East China Sea, roughly 170 kilometers northeast of Taiwan. The largest island covers less than four square kilometers. No one lives there. A fish processing plant operated briefly in the early twentieth century, but it closed in 1940 and the islands have been uninhabited since.

Japan has administered the islands since 1972, when the United States transferred control as part of the reversion of Okinawa. China and Taiwan both claim sovereignty, asserting that the islands were historically part of Chinese territory and were illegally seized by Japan in 1895. Japan maintains that it surveyed the islands in 1885, found them uninhabited with no evidence of Chinese control, and incorporated them into Japanese territory legally under international law.

Why does any of this matter for islands where nobody lives?

Three reasons. First, the waters around the islands are rich fishing grounds. Second, there may be significant oil and natural gas deposits in the surrounding seabed—potential resources that became more attractive after an initial survey in 1969. Third, and most importantly, the islands sit athwart the sea lanes connecting China to the Pacific Ocean. Whoever controls them has a strategic advantage in any future conflict.

The territorial dispute simmered for decades without boiling over. Japan administered the islands; China protested periodically; both sides tacitly agreed not to escalate. Then, in 2012, the Japanese government purchased the islands from their private owner, and everything changed.

The Purchase That Broke the Peace

To understand what happened in 2012, you need to understand Japanese domestic politics.

Shintaro Ishihara, the governor of Tokyo and a well-known nationalist provocateur, announced a plan to purchase the Senkaku Islands using Tokyo municipal funds. Ishihara had built his political career on controversial statements about China, Korea, and the United States. He was known for denying the Nanjing Massacre and making inflammatory comments about foreign countries. The fear was that Ishihara would use municipal ownership of the islands to escalate tensions—perhaps by building structures, stationing personnel, or taking other actions that would provoke China.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, from the center-left Democratic Party, decided to pre-empt Ishihara by having the national government purchase the islands instead. Noda reasoned that central government ownership would actually be more stable and less provocative than letting Ishihara get his hands on them.

This calculation proved catastrophically wrong.

From China's perspective, the distinction between purchase by the Tokyo government and purchase by the national government was meaningless. What mattered was that Japan was nationalizing disputed territory—formalizing control over islands that China claimed as its own. The purchase came just as China's new leadership under Xi Jinping was consolidating power and adopting a more assertive foreign policy.

The Chinese government responded with fury. Mass protests erupted in over 100 Chinese cities. Demonstrators attacked Japanese businesses, overturned Japanese cars, and called for boycotts of Japanese goods. Some of the protests turned violent, with shops looted and Japanese nationals assaulted. The Chinese government initially tolerated or even encouraged the protests before pulling them back when the violence threatened to spiral out of control.

Trade between the two countries plummeted. Tourism collapsed. Japanese companies reported a sharp drop in sales in China. Chinese government vessels began patrolling the waters around the islands, directly challenging Japan's administrative control for the first time.

Relations had reached their lowest point since the normalization of diplomatic ties in 1972.

The Taiwan Factor

Lurking behind the island dispute is an even larger issue: Taiwan.

When Japan normalized relations with China in 1972, it acknowledged the Chinese position that Taiwan was part of Chinese territory. Japan ceased official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, though it maintained extensive unofficial ties. For decades, this arrangement worked well enough. Taiwan remained a de facto independent country with its own government, military, and economy, while the fiction of eventual reunification satisfied Beijing's formal requirements.

The problem is that China has become increasingly insistent about Taiwan, and Japan has become increasingly worried about what a Chinese takeover would mean.

Taiwan lies just 110 kilometers off the Chinese mainland. If China controlled Taiwan, it would dominate the sea lanes through which Japanese oil imports travel. It would gain advanced semiconductor manufacturing capabilities—Taiwan makes most of the world's cutting-edge computer chips. And it would represent a dramatic shift in the regional balance of power, with a unified China projecting power directly into the western Pacific.

Japan's postwar security has depended on the American alliance. The United States has maintained bases in Japan and extended a nuclear umbrella over its ally. But the United States has also grown more concerned about Taiwan, and has pushed Japan to take a more active role in regional security.

In 2005, Japan and the United States issued a joint statement identifying the peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue as a common strategic objective. China protested furiously, accusing Japan of interfering in internal Chinese affairs. More recently, in 2025, comments by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi about potentially defending Taiwan caused another deterioration in relations.

The Taiwan question illustrates why China-Japan relations remain so fraught. The two countries have fundamentally incompatible views of regional order. China sees itself as the natural center of Asian civilization, now resuming its historical position after a century of weakness. Japan sees itself as an independent power that must balance against any hegemon, whether Western or Asian. These visions cannot both be realized.

What the Polls Show

If you want to understand the state of China-Japan relations, look at public opinion surveys. The numbers are striking.

In both countries, overwhelming majorities report negative views of the other. The percentage of Japanese with unfavorable views of China has exceeded 80 percent in recent years. Chinese views of Japan are similarly negative. These are not marginal figures—they represent dominant public opinion in two of the world's most important countries.

The contrast with economic data is remarkable. Trade flourishes. Tourism continues. Investment flows. But underlying all this commerce is a deep well of mutual suspicion and resentment that shows no signs of draining.

Why such negativity? The obvious answer is history—the unhealed wounds of the Sino-Japanese War, the periodic flare-ups over Yasukuni and textbooks, the unresolved territorial disputes. But there is something more. As China has grown stronger, both countries have had to adjust to a new reality. For Japan, this means accepting that it is no longer the dominant Asian power. For China, it means asserting claims and influence that it could not when it was weaker. Neither adjustment is comfortable.

The Relationship Today

As of the mid-2020s, China and Japan remain locked in an uneasy embrace. They are each other's largest or second-largest trading partners, depending on how you count. Chinese tourists visit Japan in the millions, Chinese students fill Japanese universities, Japanese factories operate throughout China. The economic interdependence is profound and growing.

Yet the political relationship remains troubled. The Senkaku dispute is unresolved. Chinese vessels regularly enter waters that Japan considers its own. Japan has increased its defense spending and strengthened its alliance with the United States. Both countries are building up military capabilities with each other in mind.

History remains contested. China continues to demand what it considers adequate acknowledgment of Japanese wartime atrocities. Japan has issued numerous apologies and statements of remorse, but critics say these are undermined by Yasukuni visits, textbook controversies, and comments by politicians that seem to minimize or deny past crimes. Each side believes the other is acting in bad faith.

And then there is Taiwan—the issue that could transform this difficult relationship into an outright confrontation. If China ever attempts to take Taiwan by force, and if the United States intervenes, Japan would almost certainly be drawn in. American bases in Japan would be essential to any defense of Taiwan. China might attack those bases preemptively. The scenario is not academic; military planners on all sides war-game it regularly.

What Comes Next

The relationship between China and Japan is not destined to remain hostile. The two countries share deep cultural connections, massive economic ties, and a common interest in regional stability. Japanese popular culture—anime, manga, video games—is hugely popular in China. Chinese cuisine and traditional arts have devoted Japanese fans. There is a genuine foundation for better relations if political leaders chose to build on it.

But the obstacles are formidable. The wounds of the twentieth century have not healed. The territorial disputes have no obvious solution. The broader geopolitical competition between the United States and China puts Japan in an uncomfortable position, forced to choose between its security alliance and its economic interests.

Perhaps the most important thing to understand about China-Japan relations is that the past is never past. Every territorial dispute, every diplomatic incident, every trade negotiation takes place against the backdrop of a history that both countries remember—and remember differently. Until that history can be confronted and somehow transcended, the relationship will remain what it has been for decades: essential, profitable, and perpetually troubled.

Two ancient civilizations, separated by a narrow sea, bound together by commerce and culture, divided by memory and ambition. That is the story of China and Japan, and it shows no signs of reaching its final chapter.