Abe and China: Beyond Yasukuni

When former Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo was assassinated on July 8 during a campaign event in Nara, Japan, it shocked the world – China included. While the Chinese Foreign Ministry responded fairly immediately, answering a question on the shooting during a routine press conference, a formal statement from President Xi Jinping took longer to appear. A personal response from Xi was only issued on July 9, and it was damning in its faint praise.

As Henry Gao, a law professor at Singapore Management University, pointed out on Twitter, the language was toned down compared to past expressions of regret on the deaths of foreign leaders, which often offer “deepest condolences” and emphasize the deceased’s “important” or “outstanding” contributions to relations with China. After Abe’s passing, though, Xi offered “deep condolences” and noted that “former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made efforts to improve China-Japan relations when he was in office and contributed positively to this endeavor.”

The tepid official reaction stood in stark contrast to vociferous debate on Chinese social media. Online, nationalists expressing outright glee over Abe’s death (and calling the killer a “hero”) clashed with moderate voices who demanded basic respect for the dead and tried to highlight Abe’s more genteel side – including a handwritten note in Chinese characters he had left thanking the cleaning staff after a hotel stay in China.

The reaction embodies the complexities of China-Japan relations under Abe, which started out bad, grew worse, and improved noticeably before nosediving again over the course of his tenure.

Given his nationalist tendencies and controversial remarks downplaying or outright denying historical abuses committed by Imperial Japan, it’s no wonder Abe was not popular in China. He was seen in China (and in many other countries) as an avatar of the “Japanese rightwing,” a term Chinese officials often used to obliquely refer to Abe.

But in reviewing Abe’s impact on China-Japan relations, we can’t overlook the fact that ties were already in a deep freeze before Abe was even elected LDP president, much less took over the prime minister’s seat. In early September 2012, Japan’s government, then under Noda Yoshihiko of the Democratic Party of Japan, had decided to purchase several of the Senkaku Islands – claimed by China, which calls them the Diaoyu – after Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintaro threatened to do so on behalf of the capital city. China erupted in official and public rage, with boycotts of Japanese goods and mass anti-Japan protests, which at times turned violent.

Abe won the Liberal Democratic Party’s leadership race at the end of September 2012 and was ushered into national power after general elections in December of that year.

While Abe took office after the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute boiled over, he held many of the same policy positions as Ishihara (although Abe was also generally more savvy, and less gaffe-prone, in expressing his opinions). China’s innate distrust of the new LDP leader was confirmed when he visited the controversial Yasukuni Shrine in December 2013.

“The Chinese government expresses its strong indignation over the behavior of the Japanese leader which grossly tramples on the sentiment of the Chinese people and other Asian peoples victimized in the war and openly challenges the historical justice and human conscience, and lodges a strong protest and severe condemnation against the Japanese side,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said at the time.

The spokesperson added that China-Japan relations had already been “been beset by continuous, serious difficulties” since the nationalization of the Senkaku Islands. “Instead of reining in his acts, the Japanese leader has gone out of his way to once again create a serious incident on the issue of history, thus erecting a new, major political barrier to the improvement and development of bilateral ties,” the spokesperson said.

For his part, Abe may have felt justified in visiting the shrine, as China had continued to encroach upon Japan’s control of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, including announcing its own air defense identification zone, which covered the airspace above the islands, in November 2013.

If China-Japan relations were frozen before, they entered a veritable ice age after Abe’s Yasukuni visit. Official meetings were cut off, with Beijing declaring pointedly in January 2013 that the “current serious difficulties in China-Japan relations were solely caused by the Japanese side.”

But then Abe’s pragmatic streak kicked in: Recognizing that ties with China, Japan’s top trading partner, couldn’t be allowed to sour too much, the Japanese government began reaching out. Eventually, in November 2014, a breakthrough meeting between Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi and Japanese National Security Advisor Yachi Shotaro resulted in a “four-point consensus” that paved the way for some normality in the relationship. After finessing their differences on historical issues and the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute, both sides agreed to “gradually resume political, diplomatic and security dialogue through various multilateral and bilateral channels.”

Ties, however, were not good by any stretch. The cycle of freeze-thaw-freeze continued through Abe’s term, most noticeably when both China and Japan were (somewhat perplexingly) singled out for economic punishment by the Trump administration in the United States.

But beneath the surface, Abe was consistent on one point: He continued to see China as a major security threat to Japan and positioned Tokyo accordingly. And it is this aspect of Abe’s approach to China that made the most lasting difference. As has been widely reported, Abe reconfigured Japan’s national security outlook, creating a National Security Council and unilaterally reinterpreting Japan’s pacifist constitution to allow for defense of Japan’s allies as well as arms exports. Abe also not only joined but helped created regional coalitions widely seen as counters to China, including the Quad but also Japan’s trilateral and bilateral partnerships with regional countries skeptical of Beijing’s growing influence.

Zooming out, the big-picture impact of Abe’s tenure on China-Japan relations was to move Tokyo firmly into the camp of Beijing’s antagonists. The tortuous China-Japan relationship didn’t start with Abe, but over the course of his nearly eight years in office he slowly but surely positioned Japan as the most forward-leaning regional challenger to a Chinese sphere of influence.

Pre-Abe, Japan’s approach to China was more similar to South Korea’s today, marked by an intense reluctance to go too far in alienating China, due to its economic importance to the country. Under Abe, that changed. In recent years, Japan has found its voice on China’s coercion of Taiwan, oppression of minority groups at home, and remaking of Hong Kong.

In a telling reaction, China seems to have given up on trying to win Tokyo over. The leaders of four Asia-Pacific countries – Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea – attended this year’s NATO summit, in a historic first. But Japan was the only one singled out for specific (and heavy) criticism by Beijing. “It seems Japan intends to spearhead NATO’s foray into the Asia-Pacific,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian pontificated on July 1. “This is driven entirely by selfish interest and a Cold War mentality.”

Notably, Zhao did not even mention the other three countries that attended the NATO summit alongside Japan. With new governments in Australia and South Korea, Beijing is hoping for a “reset” of those relationships, and New Zealand has traditionally avoided drawing China’s full ire. But Japan, it seems, is viewed as a lost cause in Beijing – even two years after Abe stepped down from the premiership.

During a 2018 visit to China – one of the high points of China-Japan relations in recent years – Abe declared that he wanted “to lift Japan-China relations to a new era.” He succeeded, but not in the rosy sense that phrase usually implies. Instead, the relationship has entered an era marked by open competition and contestation.