Reassuring and Unnerving Japan } 711
China showed little understanding of Japan’s nuclear allergy. Its media
belittled Japanese opposition to China’s nuclear test program. China had made
many declarations of its policy of no first use of nuclear weapons and of its
peaceful intentions toward all of China’s neighbors, China’s media explained.
Only people who were hostile to China would doubt these solemn guarantees.
Japan was attempting to keep China weak so that Japan could eventually dom-
inate East Asia—just as it had sought to do in the 1930s, or so China’s media
explained. Japan’s media followed closely the Chinese depiction of Japan and
were shocked by the negative interpretations of Japan that erupted so quickly
and forcefully in 1993 only months after Japan helped China escape post 6-4
sanctions. The stated Chinese fear of revival of Japanese militarism, along with
the constant exaggeration of the influence of ultranationalists in Japan’s poli-
tics, struck many Japanese as incredible. China seemed obsessed by “history”
even though the Japan of the 1990s was vastly different that the Japan of the
1930s. China seemed willfully unable to recognize those vast differences. It
seemed to more and more Japanese that two decades of Japanese effort to build
goodwill with China—lots of ODA, Japanese investment, cultural exchanges,
frequent top-level exchanges—had all been for naught. China’s leaders under-
stood the importance of Japan for China’s development effort, but they sim-
ply did not understand Japan’s anxieties about China’s own actions. Instead,
Beijing decided to further intensify pressure on Tokyo.^9
By the mid-1990s, Jiang Zemin was putting his mark on China’s diplo-
macy. Vulnerability to criticism by Politburo rivals like Li Peng may have
prompted Jiang to defend against charges of weakness before the West by
adopting a tough approach toward Japan.^10 Charges of weakness in deal-
ing with Japan had often proved to be an effective weapon in intraelite
struggles. Only a decade earlier, charges that Hu Yaobang had made a
misstep in inviting Japanese youth to visit China had played a role in the
conservative campaign to topple Hu. Positioning himself to push forward
with Deng’s controversial post-1992 “second opening,” Jiang needed to
protect his flank from conservative criticism. A tough approach to Japan
would also enhance Jiang’s popularity, something that might be useful,
since Jiang’s only real claim to legitimacy was that he had been chosen by
Deng Xiaoping. This led Jiang to put the history issue at the center of his
November 1998 visit to Japan.
Japanese leaders had many times expressed remorse for Japan’s history of
aggression, as laid out in Figure 26-3. Before 1993, and again after 2006, these
Japanese mea culpas satisfied China’s leaders at least to the extent that they
deemed them adequate to set aside the history issue and cooperate in other
areas. Not so during the 1993–2005 period. During those years, Beijing chose
to put the history issue at the core of Sino-Japan relations.
Jiang Zemin’s November 1998 state visit to Japan was a disaster, deeply
offending Japanese public opinion. Jiang’s visit was the first by China’s
top leader to Japan since Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 visit and was intended to