It appears that Japan-China relations, severely strained by recent anti-Japanese demonstrations in Chinese cities, are beginning to move toward rapprochement. Credit goes to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Chinese President Hu Jintao, who agreed on the urgent need to improve bilateral ties at a meeting in Jakarta on Saturday.
Their meeting came at a time when radical anti-Japanese protests were clouding the prospects for bilateral economic relations. At risk was not only tourism, with many Japanese canceling or postponing trips to China, but also trade and investment between the two countries.
The Koizumi-Hu talks, held on the sidelines of the second Asia-Africa summit, bring to mind a groundbreaking encounter that took place 50 years ago, in April 1955, between then State Minister Tatsunosuke Takasaki and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai during the first Asia-Africa summit in Bandung, Indonesia. There, Zhou invited Takasaki to visit China -- a visit that would lead to the opening of semigovernmental trade between the two nations and, eventually, to the normalization of relations in 1972.