[The Epoch Times, January 22, 2022](The Epoch Times features interviews and reports by Winnie, Wang Jiayi, and Liang Xin) According to Japanese media reports, Japan will completely end the 40-year government development assistance (ODA) to China in March this year. ). These aids have played a considerable role in China’s economic development, but the vast majority of Chinese are unaware of it.
On January 14, the Nikkei Chinese website published an article titled “Japan’s ODA to China Falls the Curtain of History”, referring to the Japanese government’s development assistance (ODA) to China, which began in December 1979, and will be launched in March this year. The month is completely over, and there are still 2 members of the Japanese Youth Overseas Cooperation Team engaged in Japanese language education in China.
Over the past 40 years, Japan has been China’s largest donor, accounting for 66.9% of the world’s total aid to China. At the same time, China is also Japan’s largest recipient of aid. But the Chinese, especially ordinary people, know almost nothing about it.
Japan’s ODA assistance to China began in 1979, and the forms of assistance include funding, technology and personnel training. As of 2015, Japan has accumulated 3.66 trillion yen (about 32.2 billion U.S. dollars) in aid to China, including 3.3 trillion yen (about 29.04 billion U.S. dollars) in concessional loans and more than 157.5 billion yen (about 1.35 billion U.S. dollars) in free aid. USD), technical assistance exceeded 184 billion yen (about 1.62 billion U.S. dollars), involving 367 large-scale projects.
Major projects aided by Japan’s ODA include Beijing International Airport, Shanghai Pudong Airport, Wuhan Tianhe Airport, Shanghai Baoshan Power Plant, China-Japan Friendship Hospital, Beijing Metro Line 2, etc. (see picture).
Bonnie S. Glaser, a senior adviser on Asian affairs and a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, once said that over the past 40 years, the aid has made a “great contribution” to China’s economic transformation, and Japan’s contribution to the Chinese economy Development plays a big role, but it is rarely acknowledged.
In October 2018, when former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited China, he announced that Japan would end 40 years of aid to China. In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying acknowledged that Japan’s aid to China has played a positive role in China’s reform and opening up and economic construction, but at the same time stressed that “Japan has also gained tangible benefits from it.”
At that time, Yang Zhongmei, a senior researcher at the U.S.-China-Japan Comparative Policy Institute, told VOA that the CCP’s foreign ministry’s claim that Japan has benefited from its aid to China is the CCP’s claim to protect its own face, because it has never well promoted Japan’s economic aid, but attributed the achievements of reform and opening up to the “proper leadership” of the CCP regime.
Japanese scholar: It is regrettable that the CCP concealed ODA
Bokudo Mizoguchi, director of the Institute of Asian Culture, History and Politics, said in an interview with The Epoch Times that the Japanese government has been supporting China since the 1980s, but the CCP has not told the Chinese people about this. sorry thing.
“I feel very sorry that the Chinese government does not tell the people about Japan’s contribution to China’s development. I am angry at the Communist Party’s lies. The Japanese government and people have been helping those who see us as the enemy,” Mizoguchi said. .
He said, “Since the CCP established its government in 1949, all the propaganda of the CCP has been false. Its regime is built with lies, and Japan has religion and freedom, so the CCP will always regard us as an enemy.”
“As long as the CCP exists, this is a knot that will never be undone,” he added.
Keiko Kawasoe, a well-known Japanese writer, and Professor Ding Shufan, a researcher at the Center for International Relations at Taiwan’s National Chengchi University, both told The Epoch Times that Japan has provided a lot of assistance to China, but the CCP takes it for granted.
“Because China is a victorious country, you Japan must apologize to us and compensate us. There is no need for us to thank you, and there is no need to let the people know.” He Tian Keiko said.
But she also mentioned that, in fact, during World War II, the CCP did not directly fight against Japan, and it was the Kuomintang army led by Chiang Kai-shek who really resisted Japan.
Talking about the reasons why the CCP concealed Japan’s aid, Ding Shufan analyzed that after the 1980s, the Sino-Japanese relationship had experienced friction due to the issue of “history textbooks.” The CCP may wish to use the textbook incident to exaggerate Japanese militarism to criticize Japan, and use this This is a way to coerce Japan to provide more aid, and at the same time pass on the people’s dissatisfaction with Chinese society to Japan.
The issue of history textbooks discussed by Ding Shufan refers to the controversy surrounding Japanese domestic history textbooks. The main focus includes the historical interpretation of the historical facts of World War II, the approval and adoption of new textbooks, and international diplomacy and reconciliation.
Background of Japan’s Development Aid to China
Japan’s aid plan to China originated from a visit to Japan by former CCP leader Deng Xiaoping in 1978. After visiting Nissan Motor, Nippon Steel, Matsushita Electric and other companies, and taking the Shinkansen, Japan’s modern industry opened Deng Xiaoping’s eyes, so he proposed the “reform and opening up” policy and eagerly sought foreign assistance .
Mitsuya Araki, who has been involved in and led Japan’s economic aid to China, said in an interview with The Epoch Times in 2018: “At that time, China still had the aftershocks of the Cultural Revolution, and even the World Bank did not lend to China, Japan It was the first country to assist China.”
Araki said that after World War II, China gave up Japan’s war reparations. After the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Japan in 1972, the two sides reached a tacit agreement to replace war reparations with ODA assistance.
According to him, Japan’s aid to China is divided into soft and hard aspects, and is divided into three stages, with a yen loan and aid plan formulated every five years. The hardware aspect mainly refers to infrastructure construction such as energy and power, harbors, and airports, while the software aspect mainly refers to health care, medical treatment, environmental protection, education and personnel training, among which education and personnel training involve more than 200 universities in 22 provinces.
Regarding the purpose of Japan’s aid to China, Yasushi Matsuda, a professor at the Institute of Oriental Culture at the University of Tokyo in Japan, once said after Abe announced the end of aid to China, “Like the United States and other Western countries, Japan hopes that through foreign aid, China can become a more prosperous, democratic, and Countries that are in line with international standards, however, backfired, and China went further and further away, which is also an important reason why the Japanese people criticized and called for the end of aid.”
China’s decision to abandon claims from Japan was first made by the Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek’s stance of “repaying grievances with virtue”. According to the “Peace Treaty between Japan and the Republic of China” (referred to as the “Hua-Japan Peace Treaty”) signed on April 28, 1952, the Republic of China voluntarily waived its claim for compensation.
China, on the other hand, gave up its claim to Japan under the background of its bad relations with the former Soviet Union and Mao Zedong’s decision to make friends to deal with the Soviet Union. According to the Sino-Japanese Joint Statement signed on September 29, 1972, the CCP decided to “abandon its war reparations claims against Japan”.
Responsible editor: Lian Shuhua#
