From 1979 to 2017, Japan has been China’s largest aid donor. The total amount of aid to China reached 3.65 trillion yen (255.1 billion yuan), with a total of 231 projects assisted. With so much money in aid to China, should we say thank you to Japan?
Don’t rush to conclusions, first understand the ins and outs of the matter. We all know that Japan was one of the origin countries of the Second World War. It committed unforgivable crimes against people all over the world, including Asia. Japan, the defeated country, should morally compensate the victimized countries. As the largest victimized country in Asia, China has not received compensation due to various reasons.
From 1979 to 2017, Japan has been China’s largest aid donor. The total amount of aid to China reached 3.65 trillion yen (255.1 billion yuan), with a total of 231 projects assisted. With so much money in aid to China, should we say thank you to Japan?
Don’t rush to conclusions, first understand the ins and outs of the matter. We all know that Japan was one of the origin countries of World War II and committed unforgivable crimes against people all over the world, including Asia. Japan, the defeated country, should morally compensate the victimized countries. As the largest victimized country in Asia, China has not received compensation due to various reasons.
At this time, China did not know that Japan had a government development assistance project called ODA. As early as 1954, Japan joined the Colombo International Mutual Assistance Plan initiated by the Commonwealth countries. Then he proposed his own official development assistance plan, the full name is Official Development Assistance, or ODA for short. This plan requires developed countries to provide financial and technical assistance, education and training programs to help the socio-economic development of Southeast Asia. In this way, Japan donated Philippines , India, Indonesia , Vietnam , Malaysia and other countries that it had invaded before.
In 1978, the spring breeze of reform and opening up blew across the land of China. In October of the same year, the chief designer visited Japan. This was the first time that a Chinese leader set foot on Japanese soil since the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Japan in 1972. During the visit, the chief designer visited famous Japanese companies such as Nippon Steel Corporation, Panasonic Electric Co., Ltd., and also took a Shinkansen train from Tokyo to Kansai, and expressed his desire to improve technology and capital. Willingness to cooperate with Japan. A few weeks after returning from an inspection trip to Japan, at the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the chief architect announced that he would "transfer class struggle to economic construction."
The only foreign aid China received before the founding of the People's Republic of China was the industrial aid provided by the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries between the 1950s and the 1970s. From 1950 to 1959, the former Soviet Union assisted China in a total of 154 industrial projects, including 44 projects in the national defense industry, 22 projects in the metallurgical industry, 52 projects in the energy industry, 424 projects in the mechanical industry, chemical and light industries, covering an industrial country. All the industrial systems needed for heavy industry and defense industry. In 1960, Sino-Soviet relations deteriorated sharply. The Soviet Union unilaterally tore up all aid agreements it had signed with China and withdrew all aid experts from China, causing the interruption of many Soviet aid projects. A few years later, China paid off the Soviet loan ahead of schedule. It concluded from experience that even "comrade-style aid" was unreliable, and it has always had a relatively negative attitude towards accepting foreign loans.
Since then, China has not borrowed money from foreign governments and pursued an economic policy of "independence and self-reliance". The use of foreign funds is limited to small-scale inter-bank lending. Reform and opening up requires equipment for economic construction, but what should I do if my family has no money? China's foreign exchange reserves dropped from 2 billion US dollars in 1978 to 840 million US dollars in 1979. In the first half of 1979, they fell to 167 million US dollars. China's trade deficit reached 12.9 billion U.S. dollars in 1978, and 6.36 billion U.S. dollars of complete equipment and technology contracts, including those of Baosteel, were forced to be terminated or frozen. In order to find funds, we have to seek to borrow money from Western countries to develop.
Western countries have expressed their willingness to lend money to China, but the approval processes and administrative efficiency of each country are different.Kimura Kazuzo, President of the Kansai Headquarters of the Japan Council for the Promotion of International Trade, led a delegation to Beijing and brought exciting news: the Japanese government has a foreign aid loan designed to help low-income countries with a per capita GDP of less than US$800 develop their economies. After repeated invitations from Japan, as the creator of Cat Theory, the chief designer immediately made the decision: If the conditions are met, he will apply for a Japanese aid loan.
In 1979, former Foreign Minister Masayoshi Ohira was promoted to Prime Minister of Japan. During his visit to China, he made a high-profile announcement that Japan is willing to provide assistance for China's economic development. Subsequently, the Japanese government approved the first batch of six large-scale infrastructure projects totaling 330 billion yen. Due to China's lack of supporting construction funds, it was eventually changed to four large-scale infrastructure projects, namely the "Two Ports and Two Roads": Qinhuangdao Port , Shijiusuo Port, Beijing-Qinhuangdao Railway and Yanzhou-Shijiusuo Railway. In addition to ODA, Japan has also provided three batches of energy and other infrastructure loans, mainly for the construction of oil fields and coal mines, with a total amount of approximately 1.7 trillion yen. At this time, China's foreign exchange reserves only have 167 million US dollars left, and the total amount of loans provided by Japan has exceeded China's entire wealth. It is said that it is a timely help, which is also true.
The history of Japan’s ODA assistance to China has lasted nearly 40 years from 1979 to 2017. The total amount of assistance to China reached 3.65 trillion yen (255.1 billion yuan), and a total of 231 projects were assisted in the construction. Japan’s aid to China can be seen everywhere in various infrastructure construction projects across the country. The entire aid project includes low-interest loans reaching 3.31 trillion yen (231.79 billion yuan), free financial assistance totaling 139.833 billion yen (9.773 billion yuan), and technical cooperation totaling 184.92 billion yen (9.773 billion yuan). 13.537 billion yuan).
However, economic development assistance is not war reparations. Among them, the share of free aid only accounts for about 5% of the total amount of aid, and the majority is still technical assistance and low-interest loans. If there is no need to repay the compensation, China has always repaid the principal and interest of the Japanese yen loan on time (Japanese loans are settled in US dollars, and China's repayments are settled in Japanese yen, and only interest is repaid in the first ten years). After the Square Agreement in the 1980s, the Japanese yen continued to strengthen, appreciating more than twice as much in a short period of time, increasing China's debt repayment burden. When China's two prime ministers and vice-premiers visited Japan, they both discussed the debt overhang problem caused by the sharp appreciation of the yen, but Japan did not agree to reduce or reduce the debt. China survived until the Asian financial crisis and the sharp depreciation of the yen, and the repayment pressure was significantly relieved.
Although 89.7% is paid loan assistance, Japan-China development assistance has still helped China a lot. In the early days of reform and opening up, Japanese yen loans accounted for more than one-fifth of my country's use of foreign capital. China used this capital to carry out large-scale infrastructure projects with long investments and slow returns. For example, the China-Japan Friendship Hospital built in 1984 and China's earliest rehabilitation center built in 1988 were both completed with the help of Japan's aid to China and Japan's technical strength. The construction of Beijing Subway Line 1, and Line 13 , Japanese loans were also used. In 1993, Beijing Gaobeidian Sewage Treatment Plant, known as the largest sewage treatment plant in the country, was officially put into use. Among its construction funds were 2.64 billion yen in loans provided by Japan. Beijing Capital Airport , Shanghai Pudong Airport, Wuhan Tianhe Airport also have the support of Japanese loans.
As of 2000, China’s railway electrification mileage, 3,842 kilometers had utilized Japanese loans, accounting for 25.8% of the total. In addition, my country has also used Japanese yen loans to build 359 docking terminals for large ships with a capacity of over 10,000 tons, accounting for 11% of the total number of terminals in the country. Japan’s economic assistance has also trained more than 35,000 Chinese technical personnel and sent more than 9,000 Japanese experts to China for guidance.
"Aid" without benefit
Some people say that Japan provided assistance out of gratitude because the Chinese government voluntarily gave up its demand for war compensation. Brother Dan wants to say that the emotional aspect of exchanges between countries is insignificant, and interests are the eternal balance. We have a good relationship with Big Brother. If we change our leadership, we won’t fall out with each other at the drop of a hat.
In the late 1970s, Japan had developed into the world's second largest economy after the United States. Its industry was booming, and it relied heavily on the United States militarily. It faced the nuclear fist and steel torrent of the Soviet almost with its bare hands, and it urgently needed to win over China; in order to match its economy As a major power, Japan, a defeated country, seeks an international status commensurate with its economic strength. It needs to return to China, one of the five permanent members of the United Nations, to establish good relations.
Two oil crises , Japan, which relies heavily on energy imports, attaches great importance to the development of energy trade with China; China has just opened its domestic market, and capitalists are optimistic about this piece of cake, which can be used to absorb excess production capacity. The use of financial aid can cultivate the market and seize economic benefits.
As of the end of 2005, Japan's free aid to China was equivalent to more than twice the amount of free aid commitments made by EU countries to China from 1993 to 2005. Japan has also made huge profits from China. The Sino-Japanese trade volume was still about 660,000 US dollars in 1979. By 2007, it soared to more than 230 billion US dollars, a direct increase of 358,000 times. This multiple is terrifying. .
As China's economy grows and develops, the relationship between China and Japan has become delicate. In 1981, Baoshan Iron and Steel Plant failed to purchase machines as originally planned, causing the "Baosteel contract change problem", which put Baosteel into financial difficulties for a time. It was not until September 1985 that Baoshan Iron and Steel Plant's No. 1 blast furnace was put into operation.
The Soviet Union disintegrated , The Cold War ended, and the U.S.-Japan alliance adjusted its new goals. In 1995, after China's two nuclear tests, Japan officially froze all free aid except humanitarian emergency aid and civilian aid, causing the amount of aid to plummet from about 7.8 billion yen in 1994 to about 500 million yen. To threaten and sanction China.
However, even if Japan continues to make small moves, it still cannot change the trend of China and Japan's national power reversal. After 2007, Japan basically stopped providing aid loans to China, and ODA was limited to a small number of free donations and technical assistance, with a limited scale. In 2010, China's GDP surpassed Japan's and became the world's second largest economy. The then Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara said in a public speech that Japan’s aid was aimed at developing countries. China had already surpassed Japan, and it would be unreasonable to provide the same aid again.
In October 2018, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited China. It was immediately announced that Japan would completely stop free ODA aid and technical support to China, and would not launch new aid projects except for existing projects. This year coincides with the 40th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Friendship Treaty. In fact, even if there is no loan assistance, China, which is a good neighbor, will not deliberately "embarrass" Japan on historical issues and actively provoke conflicts in Sino-Japanese relations. While sovereignty and territorial integrity are China's bottom line, Japan is trying to change history through so-called "economic assistance" and even hopes that China will give up its sovereignty. This is also unrealistic.
During World War II, China’s economic losses reached US$650 billion (73.5 trillion yen). The Soviet Union received US$12 billion in war compensation from Germany; Jews received US$60 billion in compensation from Germany. After its defeat, Japan paid US$2.23 billion (252.5 billion yen) in compensation to 15 countries around the world. Although the Chinese government gave up war compensation to Japan, the losses and compensation requirements caused by Japanese militarism to Chinese citizens, we are It has never been given up on any occasion.
In this case, we have a clear love-hate mentality towards Japan, " should be grateful and should be remembered ."
