China and Japan can certainly think independently. They can even think similarly when they think independently. But can they think together?

Thirty years after Shigeru Yoshida made the momentous decision to rescue Japan after a devastating war by concentrating on economic growth, Deng Xiaoping made a similar but equally momentous decision to rescue China by concentrating on economic growth through “open-and-reform.” One cannot fail to detect the striking similarity between China’s “good neighbor” policy toward its Asian neighbors since the 1990s and Japan’s “Fukuda Doctrine” toward Southeast Asian states since the 1970s: both policies aimed to reassure their respective neighbors.