A group of experts from both foreign and domestic civil think tanks said during a conference in Beijing on Tuesday that China and Japan should increase their level of mutual trust to prevent any potential crisis in the East China Sea.
Hong Yuan, a researcher from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a member of the civil think tank the Charhar Institute, said that China and Japan should enhance mutual trust in the realms of culture, diplomacy, politics and state leadership. Only when strategic mutual trust has been reached will both states be able to solve any crisis effectively.
Mathieu Duchatel, head China representative and senior researcher from independent international institute the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), said that as the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II approaches, the results of China's dialogue and negotiations with Japan may depend on historical and political influences rather than on any fundamental technical or structural differences between the two countries' armies.
When the Japanese government attempted to purchase the Diaoyu Islands from a private party in September 2012, China and Japan entered one of the most strained phases of Sino-Japanese relations in the post-war period in terms of the risk of militarized conflict. On Nov. 23, 2013, China set up the "East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone," which includes the Diaoyu Islands. In the latest development, in January 2015, Japan and China agreed to create a special communication mechanism to avoid unintended naval and air clashes.
"The risks of East China Seas conflicts between China and Japan really exists," Duchatel said at a Tuesday round-table on East China Sea crisis control organized by the Charhar Institute, SIPRI and Chinese naval policy and strategy civil think tank ihaiyang.com.cn. "It is especially necessary to build a crisis control mechanism," Duchatel continued.
He suggested separating political issues from military issues when establishing such a mechanism. Though he admitted that the path for creating the mechanism would not be smooth, he said the mechanism will have a huge positive impact on the two nations.
Zhang Tuosheng, director of research at the China Foundation for International Strategic Studies, said that crises need to be controlled as well as prevented. "The ultimate goal of crisis control is to prevent crisis from getting out of control and leading to war," he said. "I think the [goal of the] mechanism, when established, is to hold the bottom line. The bottom line is the two countries will not have accidental conflicts and go to war. "
Wang Chong, another researcher from the Charhar Institute, said the Diaoyu Islands dispute between China and Japan cannot be resolved in the next ten years, but the two governments have to be able to control possible accidental crises that the dispute may trigger.
"There will be no large-scale war between two countries, I think," Wang said. "Though the top-level dialogue almost stopped, the middle- and low-level dialogues between the two countries have never been suspended. In a sense, these kinds of dialogues are also a form of crisis control. "
Researcher Hong Yuan also noted that Japan should drop its attempts to get the United States involved as a military ally to deter and awe China. "China and Japan should go from strategic perspective and reach consensus on political and economic issues. Then military crisis control will come easily along the way."
Wang Jingtao, the deputy chief editor of ihaiyang.com.cn, added that any kind of crisis control will not resolve the two countries' disputes completely, but will "only improve the civil and folk communications between two peoples and resolve the historical issues. Then other issues can be really resolved."