The first day of a new Sino-Japanese relationship?

So after years of the Sino-Japanese leg being the weakest in the US-Japan-China strategic triangle, it seems that Premier Wen's visit will go a long way towards strengthening the Sino-Japanese relationship to a level similar to the Sino-American relationship.

Similar to the US Military's links with the PLA, Japanese Defense Minister Kyuma announced before Wen's arrival that the JSDF and the PLA are planning reciprocal port visits, a historical first during the postwar era. Otherwise, the agreements reached are extremely modest: China's lifting restrictions on Japanese rice, cooperation on the environment, and expanded cultural exchanges.

But summitry and high-level talks between senior Japanese and Chinese officials, regardless of the tangible benefits, ensure a regularized relationship, and will perhaps moderate each government's behavior in bilateral disputes.

So Wen speaks to the Japanese Diet, speaking frankly about the historical and other issues that divide Japan and China? Great. The evolving Sino-Japanese relationship is little different from China's relationships with other regional powers, the US included: equal parts challenge and opportunity. There's going to be tension, and the problems will not go away overnight. I like Representative Nagashima's response, which emphasized the structural challenge posed by a China rising in all areas (except demographics).

China is not going away -- and whether as a strong, unified great power or a weak, divided, corruption-ridden environmental disaster area, it will profoundly impact the region and the world. All of which calls for realistic expectations about what the Sino-Japanese (and Sino-US) relationships can achieve.

Waiting for Wen

It seems that today is a China kind of day, as Chinese Premier Wen begins his three-day visit to Japan today.

The much-quoted purpose of this trip is to "melt the ice" between Japan and China.

Call me a skeptic, but I think I'm with the Carnegie Endowment's Minxin Pei, who wrote in an op-ed in the FT (subscription required), "...It would be naive to see the improvement in atmosphere between Tokyo and Beijing as a substantive step towards removing tensions between the two countries. Few detect a fundamental shift in either’s policy. Neither China nor Japan has made real concessions on key bilateral disputes."

I'm not all that convinced that negotiated solutions to many of the bilateral issues between China and Japan are possible, seeing as how they're rooted in the region's changing power dynamics. Let's not forget the insecurity that China's emergence spurs in Japan, even as interdependence between them grows.

But, that said, it is as imperative -- or more imperative -- for Japan to talk with China as it is for the US to talk with China. Regular Sino-Japanese summits -- with or without concrete progress -- have value in and of themselves; stability in the region depends on open communication within the US-China-Japan strategic triangle, and given the issues between Tokyo and Beijing, the Sino-Japanese leg of the triangle may be the most important.

Such is life in multipolar Asia, where every day brings another initiative to enhance communication and cooperation.