Friends who weather the storm together

China and Japan should chose cooperation when facing friction, said Zhao Qizheng, director of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference on Sunday.

During a the welcome dinner for the eighth Beijing-Tokyo Forum, sponsored by China Daily and Genron NPO, a Japanese non-profit organization, Zhao presented a traditional Chinese painting, themed on helping each other overcome difficulties, to Yasushi Akashi, former Under Secretary General of the United Nations.

The painting titled "Wu and Yue in the same boat" was brought especially by Zhao from Shanghai, aimed at adding some warmth to the forum atmosphere given China-Japan relations experienced a little coldness in the first half of 2012.

Zhao explained that though the title tells a story initially recorded in The Art of War, an ancient Chinese military treatise attributed to Sun Tzu, the story's core idea stressed friendship instead of war.

During the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) in ancient China, Wu and Yue were two enemy states and their people were also hostile to each other.

One day, there were more than 10 people from Wu and Yue states boarding a boat to cross a river and they encountered a storm. Confronted with such a situation, they chose to cooperate with each other to fight the storm in order to survive. Finally, the storm passed and they safely arrived at the other side of the river.

Through their joint cooperation to fight the storm together, they discarded the bilateral hostility and later became friends.

"Now there is no big war in the world, but with a lot of stormy waves, which can be occasionally seen in the areas of the Pacific Ocean, Yellow Sea and Sea of Japan," said Zhao.

"What China and Japan should do? I think we should follow the path of Wu and Yue people on that boat," Zhao added.