Published on February 24, 2020.
This article introduces a Sankei Shimbun book review by Toshio Watanabe of Yoshihisa Komori’s ODA Illusion: The Great Failure of Policy Toward China.
It discusses the fact that Japan provided massive ODA to China for many years and made major contributions to the construction of key infrastructure such as Beijing’s international airport and subway, yet this contribution is hardly known in China.
It argues that Japan’s ODA to China functioned in effect as a substitute for postwar reparations, failed to contribute to Japan-China friendship, and instead coincided with anti-Japanese riots, anti-Japanese events, and China’s offensive over the Senkaku Islands.

February 24, 2020
There are surely many Japanese people who use Beijing’s international airport and subway, but they probably do not know that these were built through Japan’s ODA.
The following is from yesterday’s Sankei Shimbun book review section.
Did It Contribute to Japan-China Friendship?
ODA Illusion: The Great Failure of Policy Toward China
Author: Yoshihisa Komori
In the 1990s, Japan boasted the world’s largest scale of ODA, or Official Development Assistance, and was called an “ODA great power.”
China was by far the largest recipient country.
It may fairly be said that the foundation of transport infrastructure in Beijing and other major coastal cities saw the light of day thanks to Japan’s ODA.
There are surely many Japanese people who use Beijing’s international airport and subway, but they probably do not know that these were built through Japan’s ODA.
Why is that?
Even if Japanese people do not know, one would think that, given such a major contribution, Chinese people could not possibly be unaware of it, yet they know nothing about it.
Why is that?
This book answers such questions, and further develops persuasively the argument that the ultimate destination of these questions lies in China’s peculiar nature as a country under one-party Communist rule.
Japan’s ODA to China began in 1979 and ended in 2018.
The declaration of its end was made at the Japan-China summit meeting in October 2018.
One might have expected President Xi Jinping to express gratitude for the enormous ODA provided over forty years, but he ended only by saying that he “highly evaluates the contribution made by Japan’s ODA.”
It was only the single word “evaluates.”
Since the Japan-China Joint Communiqué, the basic document establishing diplomatic relations, stated that China “renounces its demand for war reparations,” China cannot call it reparations.
To express gratitude for reparations would be a “contradiction.”
However, in short, it was reparations.
The author says, “On the Chinese side, not only at the government level but also at the level of the people, there existed the recognition that ODA from Japan was in fact postwar reparations.”
I myself have heard this kind of “recognition” from several Chinese intellectuals.
The troublesome point is that, for the Japanese government, ODA to China was a “substitute” for reparations.
The author says that on the Japanese side there was “an urgency like an obsession that, in any case, Japan had to provide funds in response to China’s demands.”
I think so too.
The question is whether ODA to China contributed to “Japan-China friendship,” but the answer, he says, is that it did not contribute at all.
He sees the reality as moving in the exact opposite direction from friendship, through anti-Japanese riots, anti-Japanese events, and China’s offensive over the Senkaku Islands.
Does not the current state of Japan-China relations prove the author’s outstanding realism?
Review by Toshio Watanabe, Academic Advisor, Takushoku University