Why the China–Japan economic relationship overrides political tensions

I had no idea how closely these two countries cooperate in economic matters over the past 100 years. You would think the Chinese are not exactly on friendly terms with Japan given Japanese colonial atrocities and conquests.

"Following Japan’s victory in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), Japan received a series of valuable but highly unequal economic rights in China: most-favored-nation status, preferential treatment for Japanese goods, and foreign investment rights for Japanese manufacturers. These economic rights created the foundation for a highly complementary economic relationship that has endured despite colonialism, war, a Cold War divide, historical grievances, territorial disputes and contestation over the future of the US-led order in Asia."

"First, individual business people have helped to sustain close economic ties between the two countries despite major changes in governing regimes, political systems and economic ideology over the past century. In the 1930s and 1940s, Japanese business leaders travelled to China as part of Japan’s colonial empire in Manchuria. They established the industries in China that would extract Chinese soybeans and iron ore in exchange for Japanese machinery and steel. In the 1950s and 1960s, these same Japanese were among those who sought to rekindle trading ties between communist China and post-war Japan. They would also develop government and business relationships that flourished following China’s economic reforms in the 1970s and 1980s." 


"Second, flows of goods and people between China and Japan have been accompanied by flows of economic ideas. Japan has been a major influence on Chinese thinking about industrial-led development, the role of science and technology in a modernising economy, and linkages between the military and civilian segments of an industrialised economy."


Why the China–Japan economic relationship overrides political tensions | The Strategist: For more than a century, close economic ties between China and Japan have developed in the absence of cooperative political and security relations, suggesting that the first is not a necessary precondition for the second. ...