Since the middle of 1990s, China-Japan relations have been undergoing a structural change.678949During past 15 years or so, the bilateral relations have witnessed two rounds of “cold politics” featured by a series of political frictions in 1995-1996 and 2001-2006 periods and tow rounds of improvement in 1997-2000 and 2006-2007. After Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s “ice-breaking” visit to China on October 8-9, 2006 and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s “ice-melting” visit to Japan on April 11-13, 2007, the relations between the two countries seem to be in a process of continuous “re-warming up”.

Given the facts that both of the two countries are in a rising process, China from a political power to an economic power and Japan from an economic power to a political power, the structural change of China-Japan relations has aroused great concern not only in the two countries themselves but also in the international community.

For China, how to manage its relations with Japan is one of the most important and also tough tasks it faces for now and the decades to come.

This article aims at drawing an overall picture of the changing process of China-Japan relations in the past 15 years, exploring their main characteristics in present stage and probing possibilities for their better relations in the future.