Sasakawa keeping China-Japan military lines open

Chinese military personnel are visiting their Japanese counterparts this week, raising hopes of more stable bilateral relations or at least greater familiarity to manage any future crises. What it probably won’t do, however, is make any fundamental change in their East Asia stand-off.

On May 14, a delegation of 20 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) senior officers arrived in Japan for six days of exchanges with Japan Self-Defense Forces counterparts. Sponsored by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, it marks the first PLA visit to Japan in four years.

The tour will include stops at the Ministry of Defense in Tokyo, Komaki Air Base near Nagoya and Maizuru Naval Base on the Japan Sea northwest of Kyoto. The more important US bases at Yokosuka, on Okinawa and elsewhere in Japan are not on the PLA’s tour schedule.

Japanese officers last visited China in July 2023 but a reciprocal visit by Chinese officers to Japan that had been scheduled for the following September was canceled when Beijing expressed diplomatic displeasure with Japan’s decision to release wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea.

The Sasakawa Peace Foundation, a privately owned non-profit policy research and project financing organization headquartered in Tokyo, established the Japan-China Field Officer Exchange Program in 2001.

The original idea was to arrange reciprocal visits on an annual basis but the two sides’ bubbling dispute over control of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands and then controversy surrounding the Covid pandemic ended all that.

Nevertheless, 26 visits involving some 400 officers have taken place so far under the program, with PLA delegations also paying calls on Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force (army), Japanese companies and even