Auspicium Melioris Aevi

Link: http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8960582
Japan and China
Peace breaking out
April 4th 2007 from the Economist print edition

Auspicium Melioris Aevi

As a Chinese, I’m very sensitive to the relationship between China and Japan. Nowadays our world is a multi-polar world, China and Japan are both superpower in this multi-polar system and both play a huge role in the peace and development of the world. Therefore, the relationship between China and Japan is very important to the development of the world, especially Asia. China is the biggest developing country in Asia and Japan is the biggest developed country in Asia. So, what choice should these two countries make in front of such a situation, more conflict or more cooperation? In my opinion, China and Japan have huge common interests with each other. They should break the historical and political ice and cooperate with each other to build a better world. For China, China is a developing country, Although these years, China’s economy increase in more than 10% every year, it has large amount of problems in population, corruption, pollution, copyright protection, energy, etc. It needs the high-technology of Japan as well as communication of talented people in different fields. Therefore, its aim to “peaceful earthquake”(peaceful rise) needs Japan’s support and help. For Japan, high-technological product export is its main economic income. At this point, China is a huge market for Japan companies. Last year, the amount of trade between China and Japan has been more than 200 billion American dollars. It’s a big breakthrough for both the two countries. Some economists predict that by 2007 China will replace America to be the biggest economic partner of Japan. Therefore, China plays a big role in Japan’s economy. To conclude this, there is a huge common interest between China and Japan. Although there are still a lot of historic and energetic conflicts, they shouldn’t be the obstacles to the development of these two great countries. (Chinese prime minister Mr Wen Jiabao was making speech in Japan’s parliament.)
As a Chinese, I’m very happy that Mr Abe and Mr Wen can put all the conflicts and frictions aside, sit together and talk about the bright future of China and Japan. History cannot be forgotten, but history is history, after all. It is not the future. The new generations of China and Japan should get along well with each other but not be hostile to each other because of the historic issues that happened in old generations.
However, in my opinion, Japanese government shouldn’t deny, revise and even distort the history. There is an old idiom in China:” dare to do, dare to admit”. Japanese government should be responsible to what they did to Chinese people in the last century and apologize to China sincerely. In this way, the ice can be truly broken and melted.
I hope that one day, Chinese and Japanese people can become true friends with each other, not only because of business and trade interest, but from their heart, to aim for building a better Asia and world.(427)