Introduction

Sino-Japanese relations appear to have a dual structure which is built into the long history of exchanges and interaction between the two countries. Some phrases such as ichii taisui (“neighbours across the strip of water”) and dobun doshu (“same Chinese characters, same race”) have long been regarded as a symbol of the friendly relationship between the two countries. Such a symbol, however, implies dual and conflicting sentiments of the Japanese and the Chinese, namely the feelings of inferiority and superiority with each other in a hierarchical order of foreign relations in Asia.

To be more specific, the Chinese have a superiority complex deriving from their cultural influence in pre-modern history and hatred stemming from Japanese military aggression against China in the modern period, while having an inferiority complex based upon Japan's co-operation in their modernization, and admiration for Japan's advanced economy. On the other hand, the Japanese have an inferiority complex due to their cultural debt to China and the sense of original sin stemming from their past aggression against China, while having a superiority complex based upon their assistance to China's modernization and contempt for China's backwardness.

One could write different histories of Chinese-Japanese relations since 1945, depending on whether one wished to emphasize the two countries’ security (or military) policies, economic connections, or other (cultural) ties. These aspects of the bilateral relationship are by no means always compatible with one another, nor can they be simply viewed as reflections of something more fundamental, whatever that something may be. Although the different manifestations of Chinese-Japanese relations are interconnected, it seems best first to sketch an outline of the security, economic, and cultural relationships, and then discuss how they add up, and what they may mean in terms of the overall international system.

China, Japan and Economic Interdependence in the Asia Pacific Region

In expressing their gratitude for economic co-operation from Japan, Chinese leaders noted that such assistance would also be profitable to Japan in the long run. We in Japan certainly have no objection to this view. (Sakutaro Tanino, The Japan Times, 1 October 1988.)

The People's Republic of China has come under strong international criticism recently over its use of the death penalty. Capital punishment had a long history in China as a permanent fixture of the criminal justice system well before the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949. Today the death penalty is an integral part of the legal system and is meted out for a wide range of offences.

During an interview in September 1986, some three years prior to seeking political asylum with his wife at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, Fang Lizhi was asked how he felt about the progress of political reform in China. Fang responded, “I must start with cosmology in answering this question.”

Fang's linkage of politics with cosmology – a branch of astrophysics concerned with the origins of the universe – must seem peculiar to those who know him only as a human rights advocate and critic of the Chinese Communist Party. Yet this was no idiosyncrasy on Fang's part. Fang's life and published work from the early 1970s to the present leave no doubt that his emergence as the symbolic leader of China's democracy movement is deeply rooted in his experiences and outlook as a scientist.

Fang's personal universe began to expand in 1972, when he and his colleagues at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) published a paper in Physica entitled “A Solution of the cosmological equations in scalar-tensor theory, with mass and blackbody radiation.” This innocuous-sounding article met with a furious response from leading theoretical circles of the Party. Fang et al. had broken a long-standing taboo by introducing the Big Bang theory to the Chinese physics world. Insofar as the Big Bang contradicted Engels's declaration that the universe must be infinite in space and time, Fang's paper was tantamount to heresy.