The recent Sino-Japanese dispute has not been brought to an end with Prime Minister Koizumi's apology for Tokyo's war record and his subsequent meeting with China's head of state, Hu Jintao. Rather than concerning historical issues, the background to the dispute concerns Japan's attempts to adopt a higher regional and international security profile and the inclusion of Taiwan in US-Japanese alliance planning. Whereas economic logic would favour cooperative solutions, nationalist trends on both sides have increasingly assumed dynamics of their own.
