Japanese lawmakers seek out renewed dialogue in Beijing

After months of near-zero political contact, Japanese lawmakers have returned to Beijing in search of steady relations even as neither government shows signs of yielding over Taiwan.

An eight-member delegation from the Japan-China Friendship Parliamentarians’ Union arrived in the Chinese capital Sunday, three weeks after a smaller cross-party group made the first such visit since Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks about a possible Taiwan contingency plunged bilateral relations into their deepest crisis in years.

Led by former State Minister of Justice Masahiro Komura, the latest group includes lawmakers from five ruling and opposition parties and is expected to meet officials from the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries — a state-backed body that cultivates ties overseas.

“Various things have begun to move in a positive direction since my visit,” Shinichi Isa, a five-term lawmaker who led the August delegation, told The Japan Times in a recent interview. “That itself is a message from the Chinese side.”

Isa, an opposition Centrist Reform Alliance member, said Chinese officials’ decision to receive Japanese politicians despite domestic opposition alone suggests their openness to engage in these challenging times.

His delegation’s Aug. 27 meeting with Lu Kang, a vice minister of the Chinese Communist Party’s International Department, was the first between Japanese lawmakers and a senior party official since Takaichi’s remarks last November.

At the time, the prime minister told parliament during a budgetary committee meeting that Chinese military action around Taiwan could create a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, allowing Tokyo to exercise collective self-defense.

Beijing responded by intensifying diplomatic and economic pressure, including tightening restrictions on dual-use exports to Japan and sidelining the country from major economic and political forums.

Isa said that while his delegation requested those restrictions be lifted and raised other issues such as the detention of Japanese nationals, Lu indicated that Beijing would not alter its position unless Takaichi withdrew or revised her position on Taiwan.

“It is a very high hurdle,” Isa acknowledged, noting that it would be politically difficult for a prime minister to retract a statement made in parliament at another government’s demand.

But disengagement, he added, would carry its own costs.

China accounted for roughly one-fifth of Japan’s merchandise trade last year, while Japan represented only about 5% of China’s.

“If this becomes a contest of endurance, Japan will lose,” the senior lawmaker said, adding that continued engagement mattered “precisely because our values and opinions differ.”

For now, parliamentary diplomacy may help prevent a complete breakdown in communication.

Former Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya is also expected to lead a business delegation to Beijing later this month as chairman of the Japan Association for the Promotion of International Trade.

Still, some experts argue that keeping channels open is not the same as rebuilding the relationship.

“The real problem is not the absence of dialogue, but dialogue without a strategy,” said Hideo Tarumi, Japan’s ambassador to China from 2020 to 2023 who is now a professor at Ritsumeikan University.

In his view, the recent visits cannot compensate for a more fundamental weakness — that the Takaichi government has yet to develop a coherent China strategy.

Lower House lawmaker Shinichi Isa speaks during a recent interview with The Japan Times. | KENJI YOSHIDA

While dialogue remains important, the former ambassador said without coordination with the Prime Minister’s Office over what visiting lawmakers should seek, any exchanges risk reinforcing Beijing’s narrative more than advancing Tokyo’s interests.

China’s official account of Isa’s August meeting illustrated that concern.

Lu called on Japan’s “people of insight” to help bring relations back on the right track and urged ruling and opposition parties to press the government to handle Taiwan issue in accordance with China’s one-China principle.

The language was a classic divide-and-conquer tactic, Tarumi said, casting Takaichi as the obstacle to better relations and those prepared to engage Beijing as the more reasonable alternative.

But the ex-ambassador said a broader problem is Tokyo and Beijing approaching negotiations from opposite directions. The Japanese government generally seeks progress on a dispute-to-dispute basis, Tarumi said, but Beijing starts with the political foundations of the relationship, demanding agreement on its basic framework before considering movement on individual issues.

That mismatch leaves Tokyo seeking relief from Chinese pressure without first defining the relationship it ultimately wants to construct.

Beijing officials have largely succeeded in setting the bilateral agenda since diplomatic ties were normalized in 1972. But that tradition was briefly altered when, according to Tarumi, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made a surprise visit to Beijing in 2006 and proposed a mutually beneficial relationship based on common strategic interests.

Abe sought not simply warmer ties but a framework for managing the rivalry.

Even after his visit to Yasukuni Shrine deepened an existing rift in 2013, his government sent national security adviser Shotaro Yachi for behind-the-scenes talks with Beijing.

Tarumi had expected Takaichi to display a similar combination of ideological conviction and strategic pragmatism. Instead, he said, her approach has lacked consistency.

“If the intention from the beginning was to confront China, that would have been one approach,” the former ambassador said. “But there has been no strategic continuity.”

The next big test for Japan-China relations may come at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen in November that the leaders of both countries are expected to attend.

The former ambassador, however, sees little prospect of continued engagement with China by Japanese lawmakers producing a fundamental improvement.

“The Japan-China relationship probably will not move under the Takaichi administration,” he said. “It should instead pursue de-risking thoroughly and build a China strategy of its own.”