I’m reading Margaret MacMillan’s Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World these days. Here’s a paragraph to consider from page 97.

In the early days of the republic, many Chinese looked to the United States as a model—of government, but also of a society. President Woodrow Wilson’s promises of a new world order founded on justice and peace, his talk of national self-determination, and his evident antipathy to Japanese attempts to dominate China and the rapid expansion of Japanese forces into Siberia in the wake of the Russian Revolution made him, briefly, a hero to nationalistic Chinese. That came to an abrupt end in 1919, when Wilson took a prominent role in the gift of former German posessions in China and Japan. The americans, so many Chinese concluded, were simply imperialists in republican clothing

Sometimes, it’s useful to remember that arrangements of the China–United States–Japan triangle have been so different in the last century as to seem a fantasy hypothetical—something out of a Star Trek: The Next Generation allegory.

Surrounding Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s trip to Japan this weekend, Japanese PM Abe Shinzo “expressed an unfeigned apology to ‘comfort women.’” Or did was the headline that he “trie[d] damage control over WW2 sex slaves”?

If you ask the Chinese official news agency, which often serves as an outlet for the Chinese government’s scoldings of Japanese leaders for “inappropriate” statements on history, Abe really meant it. In a report offering almost no details, Xinhua writes:

TOKYO, March 11 (Xinhua) — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Sunday expressed unfeigned apology to “comfort women” who were forced by Japan’s then military government into sex slavery during World War II.

In a TV program of NHK earlier in the day, Abe also reiterated that his government will not change the policy of honoring the Kono statement.

…

The prime minister’s remarks were a big conversion from what he said on Thursday, when he hinted a reinvestigation of the facts unearthed in 1993 by the previous official probe which gave birth to the Kono statement in the same year. …

In what I’ve come to know as the language of Xinhua stories, my hunch is this reflects a desire among the decision-makers in Chinese media to put the “comfort women” aside. Reuters, under the more skeptical headline quoted above, has some more detail:

On Sunday, Abe repeated that the 1993 apology remained in effect. “We have stated our heartfelt apologies to the ‘comfort women’ at the time who suffered greatly and were injured in their hearts,” Abe said in an interview with NHK television. “I want to say that that sentiment has not changed at all.”

The furore precedes a visit to Tokyo in mid-April by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Abe’s trip to Washington later that month.

In a sign the Bush administration was growing concerned, U.S. Ambassador Thomas Schieffer last week advised Tokyo not to renege on the 1993 apology, known as the “Kono Statement” after the chief cabinet secretary in whose name it was issued.

“No friend of Japan would want Japan to back away from the Kono Statement,” Schieffer told Japanese reporters on Friday

The Reuters article quotes a Sofia University political science professor as saying that the U.S. headlines surrounding this story might have led the Abe team to worry about the opinions of the Japanese public. “When Asian governments criticise Japan, no one cares but when it’s reported in the New York Times, they have to react,” said the professor, Nakano Koichi. “They care about the American elite being upset.”

Let’s see what Rep. Honda has to say about this on the Hill Thursday.

The Yasukuni Shrine may be making an exit from the rhetoric of Sino-Japanese tensions. The Chinese ambassador to Japan said in a report published yesterday that China and Japan have “finally overcome this political impediment damaging bilateral relations.”

“The political stalemate has been broken,” the ambassador, Wang Yi, said in an interview with Xinhua. But don’t think this means China will be letting Japan out of the grips of history-infused public diplomacy. If Abe Shinzo decides to visit the shrine—he hasn’t said whether he will—then the Yasukuni rhetoric may make a solid comeback.

Meanwhile, Wang turned to great power competition as a rhetorical frame for China–Japan tensions.

“Many of the conflicts and friction in China–Japan relations in recent years have surfaced over the Yasukuni Shrine issue, but the broader background is that the national strength of both countries has risen to differing degrees,” he said.

Wang also suggested that Tokyo was having trouble accepting China’s emergence as a regional power with trade and political clout.

“A senior Japanese official told me that China’s development and rise is a fact we must face up to, but just as the United States in the 1980s could not adjust to Japan’s rise, now many in Japan are not mentally prepared to accept China’s development,” Wang said.

That’s no joke when you look at recent numbers from the Pew Global Attitudes Project that show populations of Asian states aren’t exactly warm toward their neighbors. Foreign Policy’s Passport blog interprets the numbers to mean Asians aren’t buying China’s “peaceful rise” narrative (as enunciated primarily by Zheng Bijian). I think that might be a leap of logic, but either way, 70 percent of Japanese and 71 percent of Chinese have unfavorable views of each other. There is no shortage of minds to be changed.

Chinese State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan, who in September said Abe Shinzo would have to behave himself on the Yasukuni Shrine issue as a precondition for a meeting with the Chinese president after becoming prime minister, told a Japanese minister that China and Japan are at a “new starting point.”

“The two countries have already broken the five-year-long political stalemate and brought bilateral ties to the normal track of development,” the official Xinhua news agency quoted Tang as telling visiting Japanese Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Fuyushiba Tetsuzo.

“Standing at a new starting point, the two sides should work closely to add momentum to the long-term and stable development of their relations,” Tang said. [Reuters]

A Nikkei Shimbun poll found that the Japanese public ranks China as Japan’s highest diplomatic priority, followed by the United States and South Korea.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro, who led Japan for a year from 2000 to 2001, visited Taiwan this week and received a medal of honor in addition to meeting Chen Shui-bian. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson protested that “Japan should … not engage in political exchanges in any form with Taiwan independence forces.”

Mori, who was Koizumi Junichiro’s direct predecessor, visited Taiwan to similar disapproval from China in 2003.

Some may remember Mori from a rather charming faux pas, related in Wikipedia’s characteristic deadpan thus:

On meeting President Bill Clinton, he asked Clinton “Who are you?”, with the intention of saying “How are you?”. Since Clinton thought it was a joke, “I’m Hillary’s husband, and you?” Clinton answered to him in English. And then, Yoshiro Mori answered “Me, too”.

Perhaps a similar misstep with Chen would have softened Chinese opposition.

I don’t think many informed commentators really thought the calls of Nakasone and others would lead to a nuclear Japan any time soon, but it’s notable that Prime Minister Abe Shinzo pledged to Chinese President Hu Jintao at the APEC summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, that Japan would remain a non-nuclear state. Indeed, if a Japanese government decided to develop a nuclear capability, it would be soon in coming. But because the Japanese public still opposes a nuclear military—and, perhaps more significantly, Japan has no immediate need for a non-U.S. deterrent—Japan has little motivation to apply its nuclear savvy to weaponry.

According to Reuters: “Our country is the only one in the world to have suffered a nuclear attack,” Abe said. “We have to take the lead in persuading the world to give up nuclear weapons.”

Which implies the reduction of U.S. and Russian arsenals and a commitment to nonproliferation in general. We’ll see what this rhetoric amounts to.

Huang Xinyuan says Sino-Japanese relations have recovered. That’s after Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s second meeting with President Hu Jintao this weekend at the APEC summit in Hanoi, and after five years of stilted relations during Koizumi Junichiro’s leadership in Japan.

“Since Prime Minister Abe’s visit to China,” Huang Xingyuan, Councilor with China’s Foreign Ministry, said today in Hanoi, “China-Japan relations have improved dramatically and are now back on track.”

The two leaders met today.

“The talks today were constructive and positive and will definitely improve China-Japan relations,” said Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing Saturday. …

“This is a sign that both countries relations are improving and developing, and that progress is being made,” Hu told Abe, according to a pool statement released to reporters today. “China-Japan relations will be at this important juncture for some time and it is important that both countries’ leaders work toward developing relations in the right direction.” …

“We will continue to talk about the East China Sea,” Huang said, “and we’ll make the East China Sea an area of peace.”

Japan has urged China to stop exploration in the area until the two energy-hungry nations can set up a system for joint use of the reserves.

Japan earlier this month filed a protest with Beijing about Chinese activity in the area after detecting flames from an apparent burn-off of oil or gas — a possible sign that China was advancing its development of the disputed reserves.

The contentious issue of the Yasukuni Shrine was not discussed among the two leaders today, a Japanese government official told reporters on the condition he not be named.

Reuters reports that the leaders of the United States, Japan, and China will meet in Hanoi:

China, Japan and the United States will “exchange views on bilateral ties and international and regional issues of common concern” on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Hanoi, the official Xinhua news agency reported in a brief dispatch.

Rupert Murdoch, CEO and chairman of News Corp., told a Tokyo audience that U.S. President George W. Bush should host a trilateral summit with the leaders of China and Japan, Yomiuri Shimbun reports.

“China, Japan and the U.S. have much business to get through,” Murdoch said. “There are too many misunderstandings and misread signals among these countries.”

…

“In these times, sensitivity in foreign relations is of unusual importance and will inevitably have an impact on domestic policy,” he said, suggesting Japan’s economy would suffer the consequences if the country fails to resolve its strained relationship with China.

It’s unclear to me why Murdoch chose to make explicit his notion that Bush should play host, but a three-way discussion would certainly bring three big players to the table. Presently, the three states only work together in the context of the six-party talks on North Korean nuclear power.

Given that context, however, it may be read as a snub to South Korea and/or Russia to be left out of other discussions. Any trilateral meeting would probably be more successful in a time when North Korea could reasonably stay off the table. Even in discussions of economics, however, some states may feel snubbed: ASEAN is an important force in regional economic integration, and it is used to a seat at the table. Australia is used to inclusion in APEC, which was founded at the suggestion of an Australian leader.

The United States may also wish to avoid a trilateral meeting, since it would be hard to stay out of China–Japan disputes if all three were in a room. All the difficulties aside, I would certainly be interested to see such a summit, if only for my own curiosity.

Murdoch also criticized closed societies in comparing the prospects of China and India, saying:

“There is a vigorous debate about the relative strengths and weaknesses of China and India, but one fact is beyond debate: The free flow of information is a crucial advantage in an ultracompetitive world. There is no doubt that India is producing thousands of managers who are capable of running any company anywhere in the world. There is also no doubt that these impressive managers would not have developed in such impressive numbers if India attempted to dam the flow of facts or of opinion.”