China and Japan meet for historic talks
Updated
China's President Hu Jintao has touched down in the Japanese capital Tokyo to begin his five day state visit. But with hopes on both sides of improving relations, the range of difficult issues that exist between the two economic giants, will be kept off the agenda.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speakers: Dr Charles Morrison the President of the East West Center in Hawaii.
MORRISON: Well there are a number of issues, specific issues on the agenda, there's been problems with Chinese food, there's problems with disputes over resources in the sea and so forth. But I think the main aspect of the visit is actually not over specifics, it's really about the symbolism of the relationship.
LAM: Indeed so about the 'warm spring' that President Hu Jintao speaks of about improving relations as you say, closer bilateral ties, do you think this five day state visit will do the trick?
MORRISON: Well it won't do the trick in terms of solving all these little disputes, which will continue to arise. But it's a very important statement of the willingness of both these two large Asian countries to get along with each other.
LAM: President Hu I understand is scheduled to see Emperor Akihito more than once, now the Emperor's public appearances are rare, so is this a sign that Japan is according great importance to this visit?
MORRISON: Yes I think that is definitely a sign. Japan is giving attention to China as if it were an extremely important country to Japan, as it indeed is. China's not an ally in the way that the United States is but in terms of the Japanese economy and in terms of the way Japanese see China and the future of China in the region, it's obviously of great concern.
LAM: You mentioned some of the issues there such as energy resources, there's also North Korea to think of. How much of a challenge will these issues prove to bilateral ties and indeed on this particular visit?
MORRISON: You know the problem with these kind of issues is they can be projected as either very important or they can be minimised and kicked off into the future. China in the past has projected some of these issues as very important, but right now I think both China and Japan will be trying to see past these issues. You know Japan can't resolve its disputes in the ocean with South Korea, which it has better relations with. So I think that kind of dispute will go on for a long time without being resolved I think. But I think both sides in this particular visit intend to project all the positive aspects of the relationship.
LAM: All the same though there's still that long standing feud, the shared history between the two countries.
MORRISON: Well again one of those things that can be important or it doesn't have to be as important as it has been. I think that definitely if you assess Japanese views toward China or Chinese public views toward Japan they're not as warm as the two governments would like them to be, but literally hundreds of thousands of Japanese and Chinese are making lots of money and benefiting from the warm economic relationship with the two. The main challenge has then been to improve the tenor of the political relationship to support that economic relationship continuing to develop.
LAM: Do you think though that both sides have learnt to tone down their rhetoric.
MORRISON: They definitely have, two, three years ago the rhetoric was bad on both sides, and I think both sides were just waiting for a chance to get over that and the occasion came when Koizumi, the former prime minister stepped down, and the next Japanese prime minister was, first thing he did was to rush off to China and the Chinese were only too happy to have the ability to say that this was now a new opening in their relationship with Japan. Neither Japan nor China can fully accomplish its objectives in Asia at large unless they have a working positive relationship with each other.
LAM: Relations between the two leaders may have improved but it seems public attitudes are largely unchanged in both China and Japan. Why is it so hard for the people to move forward?
MORRISON: You know I'm not sure that it's all that hard and I'm not sure that those attitudes are as bad as often portrayed. I think they're just latent suspicions; they come from a real changing in the power relationships of Asia. Japan for a number of years has been the top dog in Asia so to speak, China has become is certainly in terms of its size even possibly the size of its economy, becoming the top dog and that power transition is one that's always tends to matter what the countries are.
So there are suspicions but those are not preventing the economic relationship from thriving and the political relationship I think will develop positively over time.
