ABSTRACT
The prospect of decreasing US military presence in East Asia was an important background factor which encouraged Japan and China to conclude the Peace and Friendship Treaty. Relations with China had been normalized in 1972, and thereafter Japan’s diplomacy between the People’s Republic of China and USSR rested on more certain diplomatic foundations. Japanese businessmen recognized the possibilities of resource development and project construction under the more legalistic, stable and pragmatic political order of Deng Xiaoping. The nineteenth century Russo-Japanese rivalry over Korea and Manchuria culminated in the war of 1904–1905. In the 1970s, the USSR was an occasional nuisance to Japan, rather than a military threat. The treaty was technically a bilateral affair. But the Sino-Soviet treaty of 1950 contained an anti-Japanese clause, and had to be abrogated in order to avoid contradiction of China proclaiming opposition to Japan in one treaty, and friendship with Japan in the other.
