The rival powers, Japan and China because of trade disputes with the United States to each other. Now it is coming in Beijing for the first summit meeting between Xi and Abe at all. Martin Fritz, Tokyo.
(Archive) Xi and Abe at the East Asia economic forum in September 2018
If Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday (26.10.) China’s President Xi Jinping in Beijing, shakes the Hand, is the first Sino-Japanese summit since 2011, shortly after the age of 40. Anniversary of the peace and friendship Treaty, both countries in 1978. The three-day summit is the culmination of a rapid Chinese-Japanese rapprochement, which had begun in the spring with the resumption of an economic dialogue.
While Abe and Xi have already spoken seven times, but only on the margins of multilateral events, although Abe had repeatedly tried to have two peaks, especially in the interest of the Japanese economy. China is Japan’s largest trading partner. Many companies have invested large sums in China. But China rejected the courtship of Abe and showed for a long time is of no interest to less-frosty relations.
Beijing is the self-conscious foreign policy of the conservative politician in Japan who wants to limit China’s influence, especially in Asia, as well as his plans to strengthen the Japanese military, and it is more flexible to use. The efforts of Abe, a line under the Second world war and then the war to drag crime to encounter Beijing sour. Only last week, the politician had sent a ritual donation to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, which also condemned and executed honors war criminals as patriots.
Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo
Rethinking China
However, the trade dispute with the USA, the approach with special duties against China’s high exports, the leadership in Beijing to have a rethink. Out of fear of international isolation, President Xi wants to be close to the European Union, to Russia and to Japan. A specific concern of China was that the U.S. wants to narrow the trade policy space of China, said Wu Junhua, head of the Japan Research Institute in Tokyo.
In the new free trade agreement for North America, there is a counter-China directional clause, according to which Canada and Mexico may complete your own free contracts with States that are not a market economy, only with the consent of the United States. The United States to recognize China as a market economy, but also the EU and Japan.
Such a blocking clause could enforce the United States in the negotiation of new agreements with the EU and Japan, said Wu. The United States would force their allies to decide for or against China.
But the government in Tokyo by the trade policy of US President Donald Trump under pressure. Man feared not only the future of import tariffs against Japanese cars, but also suffers from the US-tariff increases on Chinese Goods. Chinese orders for Japanese machine tools have declined in September by more than a fifth compared to the previous year and the seventh month in a row, because the producers in China are hesitant because of the duties with investments.
A Restaurant in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, which requires the notice Board in the middle of US American visitors, a 25 percent surcharge in retaliation for punitive tariffs
A new Phase of economic relations
The mood between China and Japan to the Positive has changed, showed up at the recent meeting of Abe and Xi during the East Asian economic summit in September in Russia’s Vladivostok. The Japanese asked the Chinese about the import restrictions on food from Fukushima should be repealed. On Xi replied with the remark that Japanese rice is delicious. After the year-long ice age, this was an unusually personal remarks of China’s President.
Specifically, Abe and Xi will want to decide on Friday in Beijing new cooperation agreements in Finance, projects and technologies. Hundreds of Japanese business leaders are accompanying the head of government. Abe wants to propose to the Chinese Premier, Li Keqiang, to stop Japanese development aid to China and to organize instead, common infrastructure projects in third countries. More than 30 such projects are already prepared and will be signed in Beijing.
In addition, the currency exchange between the Central banks of the two largest Asian economies included economies and ten times to the equivalent of 23.2 billion euros to be extended. In the case of turbulence in the financial markets, these so-called Swaps serve as a safety net. Thus, Japanese banks in China can obtain the national currency, the Yuan, and Chinese companies Yen. The old Swap agreement was expired in 2013.
USA, Japan and EU do not recognize China as a market economy
Cooperation in the field of technology
Another building block for better relations is to be discussions on technological cooperation under the working title of “innovation and dialogue on the protection of copyright”. You should first take place later this year in the framework of the economic dialogue. Seven working groups will address, inter alia, the digital economy, the cooperation of industry, Innovation, and intellectual property rights. How much the technology both sides to actually communicate, is unclear, wrote, the Japanese business newspaper Nikkei, because the discussion had partly also a great symbolic value.
Another field of sino-Japanese cooperation to the defense. Xi Jinping is in personal Union also the Supreme commander of the Chinese people’s liberation army. The chief of the operations staff of the Japanese armed forces for the first time to visit since 2008 in China. In addition, Japan is considering to receive high-level Chinese military officials.
In this context, the discussions on the Details of a Hotline between the defense authorities. It had been agreed to in June, especially in the East China sea military are avoided shocks. Near the Japanese Senkaku Islands, claimed by China as the Diaoyu Islands, it always comes back to the dangerous proximity between vessels and aircraft from both sides and witnesses.