China’s Hu, Japan’s Hatoyama Agree to Extend Thaw in Relations
By Sachiko Sakamaki
Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- China’s President Hu Jintao and Japan’s new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama agreed to push for closer ties between the two erstwhile enemies at their first meeting in New York.
“I hope and am convinced China-Japan ties will develop more actively, and enter a new phase,” Hu said yesterday, congratulating the Japanese leader on his election victory last month. Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan ended six decades of Liberal Democratic Party power, years that were often marked by frosty relations with China over Japan’s war record.
Hatoyama has urged closer ties with Japan’s Asian neighbors, and suggested to Hu the idea of an East Asian Community, modeled on the European Union. China and Japan agreed to work together to resolves differences that include disputes over energy resources in the East China Sea.
“I said we should make it a sea of fraternity instead of a sea of disputes,” Hatoyama said after meeting Hu on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.
Hu agreed that the two countries should work toward friendship and cooperation, and that officials should begin negotiations on an agreement. Hu also invited Hatoyama to a Japan, China, South Korean summit in Beijing by December.
Hatoyama urged Hu to work on promoting public support for an accord with Japan.
Hu welcomed Hatoyama’s stance on history of Japan’s aggression during the World War II, according to Japanese government officials who briefed reporters. Hatoyama told Hu his administration will honor a 1995 statement in which Japan apologized for Japan’s aggression.
Hatoyama told reporters in August he won’t visit Yasukuni Shrine, where war criminals are enshrined among the dead, and will ask his Cabinet members to refrain from making visits.
Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s annual visit to Yasukuni shrine from 2001 to 2006 aggravated bilateral ties. Relations with China had already been on the mend as none of Koizumi’s successors made the visits.
Bumpy diplomatic relations haven’t halted economic ties between China and Japan. Trade between Asia’s two biggest economies rose 13 percent to $266.3 billion in 2008, according to the Japan External Trade Organization.
To contact the reporter on this story: Sachiko Sakamaki in Tokyo at Ssakamaki1@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: September 22, 2009 00:40 EDT
integration+ (AP) - TOKYO, Sept. 4 (Kyodo)—(EDS: A FULL TEXT OF HIS OPINION PIECE WILL MOVE SHORTLY)
Yukio Hatoyama, the president of the Democratic Party of Japan who is set to become Japan's next prime minister, is calling for a common Asian currency as part of regional integration to achieve a modern-day "fraternal revolution."
In an opinion piece titled "My Political Philosophy," an official English-language copy of which was made available to Kyodo News on Friday, Hatoyama said Japan and its Asian neighbors "should aspire to the move towards regional currency integration as a natural extension of the path" of their rapid economic growth.
The proposal comes against the backdrop of the recent financial crisis, which Hatoyama says suggests to many the possible end of American unilateralism and raises doubts about "the permanence of the dollar as the key global currency."
"I also feel that as a result of the failure of the Iraq war and the financial crisis, the era of the U.S.-led globalism is coming an end and that we are moving away from a unipolar world led by the U.S. towards an era of multipolarity," he said.
Hatoyama's DPJ achieved a historic landslide victory in Sunday's general election, ousting from power the long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party which has ruled Japan almost uninterruptedly for some five decades. Hatoyama is scheduled to succeed outgoing Prime Minister Taro Aso after being voted in as the next premier in a special Diet session on Sept. 16.
A longtime advocate of fraternity, Hatoyama wrote in his opinion piece that the creation of an East Asian community is "another national goal that emerges from the concept of fraternity."
"Of course, the Japan-U.S. Security Pact will continue to be the cornerstone of Japanese diplomatic policy," he said. "However, at the same time, we must not forget our identity as a nation located in Asia.
"I believe that the East Asian region, which is showing increasing vitality in its economic growth and even closer mutual ties, must be recognized as Japan's basic sphere of being," he added.
Hatoyama emphasized the need for regional integration as a means to help settle various disputes, citing the experience of the European Union, and called for "a contemporary embodiment of the 'fraternal revolution' advocated by Count Coudenhove-Kalergi," the father of the European Union.
