Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seems to be showing his positive side to China and South Korea. He has said in public that it is important to make a real success of the Sino-Japanese Summit.

Is this really true? There is every reason to believe that Abe hopes to improve Japanese relations with China and South Korea when you see the awkward domestic situation in which he finds himself.

“Abeonomics” are not working. Japan's second quarter GDP this year was down 6.8% on a year-to-year basis. This is the worst economic depression since the earthquake hit Japan 3 years ago. The reform of Japan's economic structure proposed by Abe is also struggling.

The plight of the Japanese economy offers a worrying contrast compared with other booming Asian countries. Japanese economists are looking forward to improvements in the Sino-Japanese relationship in the hope that China’s rapid development will help Japan’s flagging economy. Abe is clearly aware of this.

After he decided to lobby for a resumption of collective self-defense, his public approval ratings plummeted. To claw back the lost public support, he has been forced to acknowledge that the majority of the Japanese public want him to resume the summit with China and South Korea.

Abe is in the position of a loud-mouthed beggar. On the one hand, he continually denies Japan's history of aggression and tries to restore Japan as a military power; on the other hand, he hopes that Japan can keep on good terms with China so that China can help it out of its economic plight. His attitude is truly brazen.What is worse is that one of the reasons why Abe wants to restore Sino-Japanese Summit is probably so that he can blame China in the case of any future intensification in the dispute with China.

This article was edited and translated from 《安倍卖好，谁信？》, source: People's Daily Overseas Edition, Author: Zhang Hong