Gratitude and Resentment in China-Japan Relations: Japan’s Official Development Assistance and China’s Renunciation of War Reparations

In this article I explore the connection between historically based emotional issues and economic interests in China-Japan relations by analyzing the linkage between China’s renunciation of war reparations and Japan’s official development assistance (ODA) to China. I argue that there is no legal linkage between the two, and previous scholarship about the linkage between the ODA and reparations involves emotional arguments or entanglements surrounding “assistance” and “history.” I conclude that, in explaining China-Japan relations, there exists a “dual gratitude theory,” related to history and assistance, as well as a “dual obligation and enmity theory.” In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the chain reaction of mutual recrimination between the two countries became increasingly unmanageable, apparently continuing to the present day.