THE OTHER CONTINENT: ASIA 379Foreign Affairs Minister Qian Qichen to Moscow and assured him of
Gorbachëv’s desire for a rapprochement. Qian in turn assured him
that Beijing wanted an improved relationship. While repeating the
Chinese demand for equality of treatment, he conveyed his apprecia-
tion of Shevardnadze’s offer to help in prising the Vietnamese forces
out of Cambodia.^5 For a long time Gorbachëv had quietly taken a dim
view of Vietnam and its economy with what he claimed were ten
million unemployed.^6 It was no trouble for him to weaken Moscow’s
ties with Ho Chi Minh City. Reconciliation with China was becoming
a distinct possibility.
He and Shevardnadze wanted to assure Asia’s other governments
that Moscow had no bellicose intentions towards them either. Shev -
ardnadze scheduled a tour of hotspots starting with Japan in late
December 1988. He had visited Tokyo three years earlier and gained
acquaintance with Japanese territorial grievances and economic
power. The Japanese had been in dispute with Moscow since 1945
when the USSR seized their northern islands, known to the Russians
as the southern Kuriles, and defeated Japan always refused to sign a
peace treaty with the USSR. Shevardnadze registered the strength of
feeling on the matter. But he ceased to engage in diplomatic overtures
in autumn 1986 when the Tokyo government sanctioned Japanese
companies joining the Strategic Defense Initiative programme.^7 On
the same trip he had gone to North Korea and Mongolia. But although
he had learned a lot, he had achieved next to nothing. And he and
Gorbachëv shifted their attention to other regions of the world.
Gorbachëv returned to Japanese matters at a meeting with figures
from Soviet journalism and the arts in May 1988: ‘Look, Khrushchëv
promised to give Soviet territories [i.e. the South Kuriles] back to the
Japanese. Yet we to this very day fight over those stones and bare rock
out there. And how much soil, truly productive soil in our own coun-
try is left untended and falls into neglect.’^8
When Shevardnadze met with Foreign Minister Sōsuke Uno in
December 1988, there was the old difficulty about the annexed islands.
Shevardnadze called for a strengthening of trade links. Uno was im-
placable; he could see no chance of progress while the ruble remained
a non-convertible currency.^9 Prime Minister Takeshita emphasized the
abiding importance of the islands for Japan.^10 In a further conversation
with Shevardnadze in America on 8 January 1989, Uno refused to
receive Gorbachëv in Japan until such time as Moscow addressed
‘the territorial question’. He indicated that once the USSR satisfied this