Normalization with the Asian Powers } 453
the last paragraph. Scholar Allen Whiting recounted the emotional responses
by Chinese Japan specialists when interrogated about those beliefs during
a mid-1980s research visit.^43 It may also be the case that Japanese under-
standing of history is inaccurate, perhaps even grossly so. But as Whiting
noted, Beijing’s typical response to efforts by the Japanese government to
make the treatment of history more accurate, or to apologize for history, has
been to stress the inadequacy of those efforts and how much remained to be
done. Tokyo’s efforts are never seen as adequate, the issue is never over or re-
solved. Japan, it seems, can never adequately atone for history.
Beijing also uses the history issue instrumentally—to achieve particular
gains on other issues, such as trade, technology transfer, or aid—by pres-
suring Japan with “history.” Domestically, stress on Japan’s past aggression
inculcated a sense of patriotism and national unity, ningzhuli in Chinese. In
the context of evaporating belief in Marxism-Leninism, this was important—
and became even more so after the upheaval of 1989–1991. As Minister of
Defense Zhang Aiping said on the August 1985 fiftieth anniversary of Japan’s
World War II surrender, China’s increasing standard of living could erode
awareness of how bitterly earlier generations had fought to achieve the happy
lives now enjoyed by Chinese. “We should not forget that once we were faced
with national extinction,” General Zhang said.^44 Use of Japan as object of
national execration, rather than, say, the United States or Russia, had several
advantages. Most obviously, neither Russia nor the United States had invaded
and attempted to conquer China. Japan has. It was far easier and more effec-
tive to direct the national animus against Japan. It is also a lot safer. Japan has
not been a major military power since 1945. Nor does it dominate the global
order—including the Taiwan Strait—in the way the United States does.
A more important use of the history issue, at least from the standpoint
of this study, has been to disqualify Japan from leadership in Asia. Japan
and China have long been rivals for status in Asia. During the many centu-
ries in which successive vast and powerful Chinese empires dominated East
Asia, it was difficult for Japan to fit into that China-centric tributary system,
because Japan’s emperors refused to accept the ritualized subordinate sta-
tus that participation in that system required. The traditional Sino-centric
tributary system of East Asia was conceptually and organizationally hier-
archical; the emperor of China was at the top, and other East Asian rulers
were arrayed under him in subordinate order. The emperor of Japan refused
to interact by these rules. He was so brazen, for example, as to style himself
a “heavenly emperor” (tianhuang in Chinese) when all proper rulers under-
stood, as China’s Office of Rites, which functioned as the foreign ministry of
China’s empire ensured they did, that there was only one celestial ruler, the
“son of heaven” (tianzi) who ruled from China’s capital. Direct interaction
between Chinese and Japanese rulers was thus very difficult. Official contact
was usually conducted via Korean third parties who accepted vassalage to