Go back to the very beginning again

As a regular attendant at the annual Beijing-Tokyo Forum, which was held in Beijing on Oct 26 and 27 this year, I was impressed this time by the sense of responsibility shown by both the Chinese and Japanese participants.

The forum was initiated by China Daily and Genron NPO in Tokyo in 2005, with the purpose of establishing an unofficial venue to push for the advancement of bilateral relations. Every year, high-ranking officials, veteran diplomats and elite scholars are invited to discuss political, security, economic and media-related topics.

From left: Former Japanese prime minister Yasuo Fukuda, Zhao Qizheng, former chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and former minister of the State Council Information Office, and Wu Jianmin, vice-chairman of the China Institute for Innovation and Development Strategy and former Chinese ambassador to France, join hands after the Beijing-Tokyo Forum on Sunday in Beijing. Zou Hong / China Daily

The worse bilateral ties are, the more prominent the attention the forum receives.

This year, thanks to the deteriorating relations between the two neighbors, there were more participants than ever and the big meeting hall was packed with more than 600 people, the audience following the discussions with rapt attention.

The territorial dispute in the East China Sea, and Japan's reluctance to face up to its aggression in China during World War II, were two unavoidable issues at the meeting, and discussions became inflamed whenever a speaker touched upon them.

This year marks the 35th anniversary of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship, and many forum guests, including former Chinese State councilor Tang Jia-xuan, and Japan's former UN under secretary-general Akashi Yasushi, recalled the contributions made by politicians from the two countries to eradicate enmity and normalize relations more than three decades ago.

In 1978, China's then-vice-premier Deng Xiaoping said that since their generation of politicians did not have enough political wisdom to solve the territorial dispute between the two countries, they should leave the problem to the future, supposedly wiser, generations to resolve it.