Japan and China shared the view that the two Asian nations did not pose a military threat to each other, two years after the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement, according to a Japanese diplomatic document.
By stabilizing the regional security situation, Tokyo and Beijing may have been trying to improve their relations frayed by the military crackdown, which prompted Western countries and Japan to impose economic sanctions on China, pundits said.
During a meeting in Beijing in 1991, then Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu told then Chinese Premier Li Peng that Japan would not be militarized, given that the nation has feelings of deep remorse for its past aggression, according to the document, which was declassified Wednesday.
Li was quoted in the document as telling Kaifu that the total amount of China's military spending was smaller than Japan's defense budget.
Following the 1989 death of Hu Yaobang, sacked as general secretary of the ruling Communist Party two years earlier for his liberal leanings, students rallied to call for democracy and government action on rampant corruption.
Support for the protest grew as people poured into Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
The protest defied martial law declared in late May and inspired big rallies across China. But from late June 3 into June 4, troops and armored vehicles cleared the square by force.
The visit to Beijing in 1991 by Kaifu, who was born in 1931 during wartime, contributed to a thaw in ties between Japan and China, the pundits said.
According to the diplomatic document, Kaifu told Li that Japan would not become a military power as its people have pledged never to go to war again, adding that any conflict would not benefit the Asia-Pacific region.
Japan invaded Korea and a huge swath of China before the end of World War II that lasted until 1945.
Kaifu, who died in 2022, reiterated that Japan must not repeat the war. Former Ambassador to China Yuji Miyamoto, who participated in the meeting between Kaifu and Li, said the then prime minister's belief led to improved Sino-Japanese relations.
Li explained to Kaifu that China's military spending was just 20 percent of Japan's defense budget, saying Tokyo does not have to worry about a threat from Beijing. In fiscal 1991, Japan's defense budget totaled around 4.4 trillion yen ($33.1 billion).
China's military spending, however, has been ballooning in recent years, reaching 1.45 trillion yuan ($207.6 billion) in 2022, as Beijing has been apparently attempting to bolster its regional security and economic clout to counter the United States.
Japan, meanwhile, decided earlier this month to acquire the capabilities to strike enemy bases and double defense spending for the next five years, in a drastic shift in its postwar security policy under the nation's war-renouncing Constitution.
In the initial budget for fiscal 2023, Japan's defense spending is expected to increase to a record of about 6.5 trillion yen, compared with 5.2 trillion yen for fiscal 2022 through March. Both figures exclude spending on the realignment of U.S. forces in Japan.
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