A Dialogue Resumed

An early fall breeze swept over Peking airport, lifting the first Rising Sun flag to fly there since 1945. As Japan's Premier Kakuei Tanaka stepped out of his DC-8, a Chinese band struck up the solemn Japanese anthem Kimigayo (The Reign of Our Emperor), then switched to the Communist Chinese anthem March of the Volunteers, the staccato marching song that Mao Tse-tung's Red Army sang during its wars with Emperor Hirohito's plundering troops in the 1930s and '40s. It was a moving beginning to a historic meeting that would end a century of hostility and reopen a dialogue between Asia's two great powers.

At week's end, with a few whisks of their Chinese writing brushes, Tanaka of Japan and Premier Chou En-lai of China signed an agreement to end "the state of war" between the two countries and establish diplomatic relations immediately. The summit was much more than a delayed coda to World War II however. The reconciliation between the two nations--one of them the world's fastest-growing industrial democracy, the other its most populous and doctrinaire Communist nation--had ended "an abnormal state of affairs," as Chou put it with considerable understatement. In resuming normal relations with Tokyo, Peking put aside the last trace of the peculiar xenophobia that scarred its foreign policy during the 1960s. An the same time, the summit marked the beginning of Japan's emergence from the U.S. foreign policy umbrella that had sheltered it through the postwar era. The meetings were a reminder that the U.S.-Chinese-Soviet triangle that had shaped Asian geopolitics for the past decade was rapidly becoming a quadrangle, with Japan an ever more active fourth side.

The immediate effect of the summit was a sharp if not unexpected diplomatic setback for Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist regime on Taiwan. In the

Tanaka-Chou communique, the Japanese managed to deal with the agonizing Taiwan issue by saying simply that Japan "understands and respects" Peking's claim to the island; known as the Dutch formula, that position went further than the Nixon-Chou communique (the U.S. merely "recognized" Peking's claim), but it still stopped short of an explicit repudiation of the Nationalist government.

Nonetheless, as soon as the communique was signed, Japanese Foreign Minister Masayoshi Ohira summoned newsmen to hear a crisp announcement. Japan, he said, considered its 1952 peace treaty with Chiang's government as having "ceased to be valid," and would sever relations forthwith. Angrily condemning Japan's "perfidious actions," the Nationalist government severed relations with Tokyo and threw a cordon of troops around the Japanese embassy in Taipei in order to protect it from possible mob violence.

Japan is the 16th country to have broken relations with Taipei in the past 23 months. The U.S. is the only major industrial nation to continue to recognize the Nationalist regime. Though Tokyo's move will surely accelerate similar shifts by smaller nations, Taipei will still be able to rely on its principal lifeline: business. With Chinese acquiescence, at least for now, Japan intends to keep its economic ties with Taiwan, which is still a bigger market (more than $760 million a year) for Japanese goods than China ($578 million). But Taiwan's trade arteries to Japan could eventually harden, with serious implications for the regime's viability. In a gesture of spite, thinly masked as a move to reduce Taiwan's $600 million Japanese trade deficit, Taipei ordered importers to begin shopping in Europe and the U.S. for machinery and other materials they used to buy in Japan.

Like President Nixon's trip last February, Tanaka's six-day visit was a mingling of televised rubbernecking (an estimated 70% of Japan's 27 million TV sets were tuned in to Tanaka's arrival) and "surprisingly frank" closed-door talks. Both sides, understandably, seemed preoccupied with symbolism as well as substance. In his welcoming speech, Chou spoke of China's past suffering from Japanese armies, saying that "we must remember such experiences and lessons." Tanaka limited himself to a terse acknowledgment that the "great troubles" that Japan had inflicted on China had given him cause for "profound self-examination"--in Japanese, a strong expression of repentance and regret.

Nonetheless, the summit was relaxed and even breezy. When Tanaka laughingly complained that he was "slightly drunk" because he had had some potent Chinese mao-tai at his guest cottage, Chou assured him that he would "prefer mao-tai to vodka. It's smooth on the throat and doesn't go to your head." He added smilingly that Tanaka, a self-made construction millionaire who is not averse to taking a drink on occasion, "should be able to hold it." Tanaka's hour-long audience with Chairman Mao Tse-tung at midweek was equally jocular. "Is the fighting over?" Mao asked, referring to Tanaka's talks with the Chinese Premier. "With Chou," Mao went on, "it's imperative that you quarrel first. Only when you quarrel first can you become a fast friend."

Cold Realism. For all the good humor, there is likely to be less warmth than cold realism in the resumed Sino-Japanese dialogue. "The two societies are radically different," reminds Harvard Asia Scholar Edwin Reischauer, a former U.S. Ambassador to Japan. "I do not see them drawing close together merely on the basis of being Asian." Peking wants some specific things from Tokyo, notably access to Japan's modern technology. But the two capitals are mainly concerned with each other's place in Asia's emerging four-power equilibrium. The Chinese, who opened the way to last week's summit, worry that that delicate balance could be upset by the Soviets. On the one hand, Moscow has 50 divisions poised on the Chinese border; on the other, it is courting the favors of China's historic Asian rival, Japan, with the possibility of negotiating a favorable Russo-Japanese peace treaty and participating in a vast program to develop natural-gas deposits in Siberia.

It was mainly with Soviet ambitions in mind that the Chinese got their Japanese guests to agree to a communique opposing attempts by other countries to "establish hegemony" in the Asia-Pacific area, a seeming rebuff to Moscow. But the Japanese are learning to play four-power politics too. Just before Premier Tanaka left for Peking, Tokyo coyly let it be known that he had written a warm letter to Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev, emphasizing that Japan wanted to develop close relations with Russia, as well as with China and the U.S.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.