Throughout the vast land, the New China News Agency delivered itself of rhapsodic song. "As the plane carrying Deputy Premier Teng Hsiao-p'ing approached Tokyo Bay, towering Mount Fuji caught the eye with its beautiful snowy peak standing out in bold relief against the blue sky."
That effusion was only the beginning. For days last week the avalanche of words and pictures from Peking's official press inundated the Chinese people on the occasion of Teng's historic visit to Japan. Chinese television was dominated by images of the ebullient leader, smiling here, strolling there, chatting, speechmaking, and altogether relishing his role as an eminent guest of his former enemy.
Indeed, the Chinese—and the Japanese, for that matter—were right to treat this visit as a stupendous event. The sleeping giant of Asia, xenophobic, almost rabid in its suspicions of other nations, had awakened to the possibilities of the real world. It had decided to confront the Soviet Union's expansionist designs on the one hand and its own economic backwardness on the other. To achieve this, Peking was willing to make a great leap outward. Not long ago, China's titular leader, Chairman Hua Kuo-feng, traveled to Rumania, Yugoslavia and Iran, making deals, offering Chinese friendship. Now it was Teng's turn.
He was, in effect, renewing a relationship that had flourished for a millennium. Between the 5th and 8th centuries, Japan imported from China its ideographic writing, its Buddhist religion, its form of government organization and codes of law. Chinese civilization deeply influenced Japanese painting, music and architecture. Still, both nations remained distinct and sometimes antagonistic. Teng's visit was a symbol of conciliation.
He had gone to Tokyo for the formal ratification of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, ending the technical state of war that has existed between the two countries since Japan invaded China in 1931. The agreement restored full political, economic, cultural and diplomatic relations, thus marking the end of a half century of enmity between the world's most populous country and Asia's principal industrial power. For Peking, the treaty served a dual purpose. It virtually guaranteed vital Japanese support for China's new and vastly ambitious plans for modernization. At the same time, it was a stunning geopolitical victory over the Soviet Union in the strategic northern Pacific region.
Clearly, Peking had prevailed over Moscow in the race for access to Japan's enormous economic and technological resources. Moreover, by establishing strong links with the Japanese, the Chinese had moved forward in their determination to shift the balance of power and isolate the Soviet Union in the Far East. Peking had even succeeded in inserting a clause into the treaty condemning "hegemony"—the favorite Greek pejorative of the Chinese, used to describe Soviet expansionism.*