Asia’s two greatest Powers join in treaty of friendship

Press, 24 October 1978, Page 9

Asia’s two greatest Powers join in treaty of friendship

NZPA-Reuter * Tokyo Asia's two dominant Powers, China and Japan, have embarked on a new era in relations that will bind them closer together and lead to greater co-operation in all but the military field.

The Chinese Vice-Premier (Mr Teng Hsiao-ping) and the Japanese Prime Minister (Mr Takeo Fukuda), watched a closely-guarded ceremony in Mr Fukuda’s official residence as the Chinese and Japanese Foreign Ministers, Mr Huang Hua and Mr Sunao Sonoda, exchanged the instruments of ratification of a Sino-Japanese peace and friendship treaty. The ten-year treaty, signed on August 12 in Peking, commits the two sides to developing perpetual ties of peace and friendship as well as to increasing industrial co-operation. The Soviet Union, which opposes the treaty, says that

Japan, by helping to modernise China’s industrial and technological base, will increase China’s war potential. Both Mr Teng, the high-est-ranking Chinese Communist leader to visit Japan, and Mr Fukuda pledged that their countries would observe every provision of the treaty. They said the pact would serve for peace and stability in Asia and the world. The Japanese view Mr Teng’s eight-day visit almost with euphoria, and see it as wiping out 47 vears of antipathy dating from the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria. But they are also trying to calm the Soviet Union,

which has denounced the treaty’s clause on hegemony — domination of a region by one country — as being aimed at it. Japanese officials hope they can mend fences with the Kremlin. Japan insisted that a clause be added saying the treatv should not affect either Japanese or Chinese relations with thiidj countries. Two police helicopters circled over the Prime Minister’s residence, and thousands of riot policemen were on guard throughout the city tn prevent any attacks by Right-wing extremists on Mr Teng or some 40 Chinese officials who had accompanied him from Peking.