Fifty years ago this week, on Sept. 29, 1972, Japan and China normalized their relationship.
It has been a turbulent half century since with ties oscillating between hot and cold, calm and contentious. That is to be expected. The two countries are neighbors, with deeply intertwined histories, cultures and economies. Both nurture ambitions for regional leadership — and both offer radically different visions of regional order. That is a formidable obstacle to building a truly forward-looking and productive partnership. It can and should be overcome.
Japan was stunned — as was most of the world — when U.S. President Richard Nixon made his historic visit to China in February 1972. The Japanese government moved quickly to normalize ties with Beijing. They terminated the state of war between the two countries and ended diplomatic recognition of the Nationalist government that fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the civil war to the communist guerrillas.