450 { China’s Quest
Within a decade, Beijing had transformed the 1979 relationship of cold isolation
into one of warm partnership and mutual understanding. Beijing’s long-range stra-
tegic objective was to build with Iran an all-weather partnership of mutual under-
standing and trust similar to the one Beijing enjoyed with Pakistan. The specific
interests served by that relationship would vary, just as they had varied from con-
taining Soviet expansion in the 1970s to minimizing American military “interfer-
ence” in the Gulf in the 1980s to oil supply in the 2010s. But the relations of trust and
understanding would enable the leaders of the two like-minded countries to forge
cooperative programs serving the interests of both. It is interesting that an event
that would transform the Sino-Iranian relation occurred the evening of June 3–4,
1989, when the PLA moved to crush China’s democracy movement—the death of
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The passing of that giant figure, rather like Mao’s
passing, would, together with the end of the Iran-Iraq war ten months earlier, lead to
profound transformations in Iran’s revolutionary state. As in China after Mao, eco-
nomic development became a priority in Iran. While Iran was at war, Sino-Iranian
cooperation was about war and peace. As Iran turned to postwar economic devel-
opment, the content of Sino-Iranian cooperation shifted to that area. But again the
two powers looked on each other as like-minded cooperative partners.Japan: Learning about History while Growing Economic TiesBeijing’s “friendship diplomacy” toward Japan, tracing back to the establish-
ment of diplomatic relations in 1972 and the treaty of peace and friendship in
1978, continued through the last decade of the Cold War in the 1980s. As long
as Beijing’s concern with Soviet expansionism was strong, China tended to
see Japan as part of the coalition checking the Soviet Union and consequently
held a benign view of Japan’s military capabilities. Priority on anti-Soviet
security concerns meant that Beijing did not press too hard on the history
issue. But as Sino-Soviet relations improved, the history issue became more
important on Beijing’s Japan agenda. Sino-Japanese friendship hobbled along
through the 1990s, but in increasingly ragged shape.^39
A shift in the narrative basis of CCP legitimacy in the early 1980s introduced
a new factor into Sino-Japan relations—Chinese nationalist resentment.
During the Mao era, the major CCP claim to legitimacy was that it had led the
Chinese people to victory over Japan and the KMT reactionaries. This vic-
tor’s narrative portrayed the Chinese people, led by the CCP, advancing from
victory to victory to drive out Japan and topple the Nationalists. The desire to
mobilize all possible forces, both within China and among ethnic Chinese in
Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, led to the construction of a new, more broadly
nationalist narrative. Dubbed the victim narrative by scholars, this narrative
stressed the glories of China’s millennia of imperial tradition, and the top-
pling of China from that exalted position by malevolent imperialists during