|
Download Japanese politicians and prominent academics from China and Japan urged Tokyo on Tuesday to abandon its outdated foreign policy of leaning on the West and accept China as a key partner and as important as the United States. The Tokyo Consensus, a joint statement issued at the end of the Beijing-Tokyo Forum, also called on both countries to expand trade and promote a free-trade agreement for China, Japan and South Korea. The consensus is the first document to suggest solutions to problems agreed by non-governmental elites from both countries since the forum started in 2005, calling on Beijing and Tokyo to join hands to help ease the European debt crisis. Koichi Kato, a member of the Japanese House of Representatives, told the forum in Tokyo that it is time for Japan to distance itself from the theory of being separate from Asia. The theory, first proclaimed by Japanese author Yukichi Fukuzawa, an influential figure during the Meiji Era (1868-1912), has guided Japan's foreign policy. Fukuzawa wrote that Japan should not wait for its neighbors, including China and Korea, to start their modernization but ought to "leave Asia" and follow Western countries. It also suggested that the government should not treat China and Korea - which he called "bad friends in Asia" - with "special sympathy", but to treat them as the West did. "We used to follow the path of breaking away from Asia and joining Europe," Kato said. | 
