Only a little more than three months after the Tiananmen crackdown of June 4, 1989, Japan sent a bipartisan delegation to China.
Japan subsequently moved ahead of other Western nations in restoring relations with Beijing, including the resumption of yen loans, Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu’s visit to China, and the Emperor’s visit in 1992.
This article records an argument by Sankei Shimbun editorial board chairman Satoshi Ishii examining the origins and persistence of what he called Japan’s unbroken current of deference toward China.

2020-07-29
On June 4, 1989, the Chinese government used force to suppress students and other demonstrators calling for political reform in Beijing, shocking the world.
While the international community, led by the G7, restricted high-level exchanges and economic relations with China, Japan sent a bipartisan delegation to China that September and subsequently moved more quickly than other Western countries toward restoring relations.
The following is from an article by Satoshi Ishii, chairman of the Sankei Shimbun editorial board, published on July 29, 2020 under the title “The Unbroken Current of Deference to China.”
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2020-07-29
China had shocked the world by causing the Tiananmen incident.
While the atmosphere was still stained with blood, Japan deliberately sent a delegation to China.
I had assumed that guests from the West would naturally receive the most deferential treatment.
That assumption was completely mistaken.
The following is from an article by Satoshi Ishii, chairman of the Sankei Shimbun editorial board, published in today’s Sankei Shimbun under the title “The Unbroken Current of Deference to China.”
Like me, who subscribed to the Asahi Shimbun until August six years ago, readers may encounter facts here that they are seeing for the first time.
Thirty-one years ago, in September, our aircraft landed late at night at Beijing airport, where even the approach lights seemed barely adequate.
We held our breath, wondering whether we would land safely.
A special flight from Shenyang in Liaoning Province, formerly Mukden, was carrying a bipartisan Japanese delegation to China.
The delegation was headed by Masayoshi Ito, chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party’s General Council and a politician highly trusted by China, and its members were selected from the Japan-China Friendship Parliamentarians’ Union.
Summoning the guests
Why had matters come to this?
When the delegation entered Beijing on September 17, 1989, Premier Li Peng was away inspecting a regional area.
The Chinese side effectively said, “If you want to meet him, come to where he is,” and the delegation accommodated that demand by making a round trip between Beijing and Shenyang on the same day.
What extraordinary discourtesy toward honored guests.
That was the impression of a reporter visiting China for the first time.
And there was more.
Only a little more than three months earlier, on June 4, the Chinese government had shocked the world by using force in Beijing to suppress large numbers of students and others.
While the atmosphere was still stained with blood, Japan deliberately sent a delegation to China.
I had assumed that guests from the West would naturally receive the most deferential treatment.
That assumption was completely mistaken.
Even Ito, who was known for his favorable attitude toward China, admitted before the trip that it was “a journey with a heavy heart.”
Nevertheless, the delegation held successive meetings with Premier Li Peng, Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin, Deng Xiaoping, chairman of the Party’s Central Military Commission, and others, and confirmed that the friendly relationship between Japan and China would remain unchanged.
A little more than a month earlier, the cabinet of Toshiki Kaifu had been inaugurated in Japan, with Shin Kanemaru, chairman of the Takeshita faction, and LDP Secretary-General Ichiro Ozawa effectively managing the government.
Dispatching the delegation to China also formed a central part of the new administration’s foreign-policy direction.
After Tiananmen, the international community, led by the G7, imposed sanctions on China, including suspending high-level diplomatic exchanges and economic relations.
Yet at the Houston Summit in July 1990, the year after taking office, Prime Minister Kaifu announced the resumption of yen loans to China that had been suspended.
He then visited China in August 1991.
Compared with Jiang Zemin’s visit to the United States in 1997 and President Bill Clinton’s visit to China in 1998, Japan moved with remarkable speed.
Three months after Kaifu’s visit to China, Kiichi Miyazawa became prime minister.
In October 1992, the Emperor’s visit to China was realized.
This, too, was part of the same trajectory of Japan’s China policy.
The intentions of the Chinese side during this period are famously described with striking candor in the memoirs of Qian Qichen, who served as foreign minister during those years.
Within the Western sanctions network against China, Japan was regarded as “the weakest link” and identified as the ideal country through which to break the isolation.
The Kanemaru-Ozawa structure supported both the Kaifu and Miyazawa administrations, and the China policy of Toshihiro Nikai, then Secretary-General of the Liberal Democratic Party, could be seen as continuing that current.
It is tempting to conclude that the source of this unbroken current of deference toward China lay in the Tanaka and Takeshita factions.
But the reality was not so simple.
At the Arche Summit immediately after Tiananmen, Prime Minister Sosuke Uno of the Nakasone faction took China’s side, saying that China should not be isolated.
Former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita and several other former prime ministers also advised him in reaching that judgment.
“A special relationship”
It was not only the political world.
In the business community at the time, there was a widespread belief that Japan and China had a “special relationship” because of the previous war, and that it was therefore natural for Japan to repay China through economic assistance and technological cooperation.
I had assumed that generational change would eventually alter this perception.
But I was forced to reconsider when Uichiro Niwa, former chairman of Itochu Corporation, was appointed ambassador to China by the Naoto Kan administration and repeatedly made statements and took positions favorable to China.
Japan’s official development assistance to China, provided over roughly forty years beginning in 1979, totaled approximately 3.6 trillion yen.
During that period, dissenting voices were occasionally heard within the Liberal Democratic Party.
At a meeting of the party’s Special Committee on External Economic Cooperation in March 2000, members pointed to China’s rising military expenditure and the fact that China was itself providing assistance to developing countries while receiving Japanese ODA.
Among veteran lawmakers, a House of Representatives member then serving only his second term asked, “Does China regard Japan’s ODA as a form of reparations?”
That member was Shinzo Abe.
Japan’s diplomacy toward China, heavily colored by a sense of atonement, changed dramatically for a time under Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who visited Yasukuni Shrine six times while in office.
Japan-China relations consequently deteriorated.
His successor, Prime Minister Abe in his first administration, traveled to China immediately after taking office in an effort to repair the relationship.
Relations deteriorated again under the subsequent Democratic Party government because of the Chinese fishing vessel collision incident and the nationalization of the Senkaku Islands.
After returning to office, Prime Minister Abe limited himself to one visit to Yasukuni Shrine and sought to improve relations by reaffirming the “mutually beneficial relationship based on common strategic interests.”
The defense white paper released this month pointed to China’s persistent “attempts to unilaterally change the status quo,” but stopped short of explicitly describing China as a “security threat.”
This was despite development activity in the East China Sea gas fields that violated agreements and infringed Japanese interests, and despite the absence of any sign that incursions affecting Japan’s sovereignty around the Senkaku Islands would cease.
The government’s target of attracting 60 million inbound visitors by 2030, with Chinese tourists clearly expected to form a major part of that number, was maintained in its Basic Policy.
Is this Japan’s resolve for the post-coronavirus era?
It is shameful to call the continued practice of watching the other side’s reaction for the sake of immediate interests “strategic.”