Gulf widens between Japan, China

A year after rocks and bottles peppered Japanese businesses and diplomatic offices in the most public anti-Japanese outbursts in urban China for decades, relations between the two largest Asian powers have, if anything, frozen further.

In a little-noticed development, Chinese leader Hu Jintao appears for the first time to be setting a clear precondition for dialogue between Japanese and Chinese leaders: the cessation of visits by Japanese leaders to Yasukuni Shrine, where 14 Japanese war criminals are enshrined. Mr. Hu gave that message to Japanese "friendship" delegations who arrived in Beijing 10 days ago, making it difficult in face-saving Asia for Japan to yield on visiting the controversial shrine. Such a policy could drive Asia's two largest nations further apart amid ever-intensifying competition for influence and resources, experts say.

Some Chinese officials privately say that anti-Japanese emotions - normally kept in check - were fanned too hotly, causing mobs in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, and Nanjing to pelt Japanese targets last spring. Japan was preparing to bid for a seat on the UN Security Council.

Yet a year later, both sides have continued a steady stream of provocative rhetoric and acts. At a rare national press conference last month, Chinese foreign minister Li Zhaoxing quoted a German diplomat who called the Yasukuni Shrine visits "stupid and immoral." When Japan officially summoned Chinese ambassador Wang Yi the next day in Tokyo, Mr. Wang refused to go - a serious diplomatic breach.

Shinzo Abe, Japan's cabinet secretary, told Japanese reporters only last week that "China and Japan have nothing in common." Yet while Mr. Abe, the lead candidate to replace Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in September, may have targeted a home audience, his comments were the lead headline in Cankao Xiaoxi, an influential paper among Beijing elites: "Shinzo Abe dares to defame China as damaging Asia's stability."

"We have a problem, and I don't see a way out of it right now, " argues a Chinese government source.

US ally Japan, and important US trading partner China, have the two largest economies and militaries in Asia. As China has steadily risen in power and influence in the past decade, the two nations, which have never resolved animosities dating to Japanese aggression in World War II, are competing for preeminence in Asia.

Both have taken an unusually sharp turn toward nationalist rhetoric. The turn has been especially swift in Japan, which until recently was considered a pacifist nation. The current architecture of relations - powerful economic links but deteriorating political and emotional ties - is unique in geopolitics, sources say.

Some experts worry most about unofficial ties. The usually liberal circles of elites, academics, NGOs, and citizens' groups that have long brought Japan and China together in important informal ways have faced damage, they say.

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