Understanding Japan–China Relations

The following sections are included:

• Dedication
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Acronyms
• About the Author

What drives Japan's relations with China? The answers to this question are necessarily complex. A long list of potential causal factors comes to mind readily: Japan's interests and perception, institutions and personalities in Japanese domestic politics, public opinions, the nature of the arenas of interaction, the long shadow of the past, China's approach and actions toward Japan, the U.S. approach and actions toward Asia, and the broader external environment in Asia and the world…

The September 2010 Chinese fishing boat collision incident was a serious dispute in Japan–China relations. Like all international disputes, a whole range of causal factors were involved in this incident and one could identify problems in all directions. But this chapter examines mainly how Japanese party politics contributed to the start, the middle, and the end of the collision dispute, with how China conducted itself kept in the background.

National identities often take precedence over national interests in Sino-Japanese relations, and, in turn, these identities are influenced by the two countries' interactions. These identities explain why the ties between China and Japan seem peculiarly emotional relative to their relations with other countries. Affinity or arrogance resulting from a long history of cultural exchange, contempt, and victimization from wars or aggression since the 1890s and confidence in superior modernization, shape how the Chinese and Japanese view each other. In particular, both China and Japan have acquired a great power identity that is partially contingent on exclusivity with each other, which underlies their current tensions…

The United States has been the most important factor in Sino-Japanese relations since before the start of the Pacific War. The United States emerged as the world superpower after the war and dominated over Japan as a protector and an ally. The Cold War constrained the ability of the Japanese government to develop a diplomatic relationship with China against its own identities and interests. Throughout its post-war history, the Japanese government has sought at times to enlarge its autonomy from the United States but has ended up depending even more on the United States facing a rising China. This chapter focuses on only part of that U.S.–Japan–China triangular dynamic, namely how the Japanese view the U.S.–China national identity gap…

The Sino-Japanese interaction these days is akin to a not-so-shadow boxing match. In this chapter, I do not intend to act like a ringside commentator who breaks down each move for praise or ridicule. People who care about this relationship are all watching instant television and social media coverage. However, this is not a game for entertainment. If the Sino-Japanese confrontation spins out of control, we will all be paying a high price for it. My purpose here is to seek a better theoretical understanding of how the two countries ended up in this unfortunate situation in the first place…

A prominent feature of contemporary East Asian international relations is the history problem that Japan faces in its relations with the People's Republic of China and the Republic of Korea. One may indeed debate whether there should be a history problem at all or whether the problem is still Japan's at this point in time. But we know as a matter of fact that Beijing and Seoul have taken diplomatic actions against Tokyo over the history issue…

Japan's strategic thinking toward Taiwan should tell us much about Tokyo's overall strategic thinking. Strategic thinking is often narrowly defined as thinking about a country's national security. More broadly, it may be seen as a calculated approach to advance a country's core national objectives. Security thinking toward Taiwan has become important to Japan since the mid-1990s. It is viewed in the context of relations with the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the world. The United States, Japan's security ally, has taken on the responsibility of defending Taiwan against unprovoked attacks from the PRC. Taiwan is strategically located on Japan's shipping lanes to Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Taiwan has become a high-stakes issue. To know a country's strategic thinking, it is crucial to see how it views high-stakes issues…

In the height of the Chinese fishing boat collision incident in September 2010, it was reported in the Japanese and Western media that China had suspended rare earth exports to Japan. Did the Chinese government adopt that strategy and why? Was it successful? More broadly, what does the case reveal about the nature of growing Sino-Japanese economic interdependence? And what does the case show about the Chinese and Japanese styles of diplomacy? This chapter addresses these questions…

Japan's Official Development Assistance (ODA) does not attract that much attention these days, in sharp contrast to the heydays of Japanese largeness in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. This is partly because Japan's ODA budget is sharply shrinking, dropping the country from the world's largest ODA donor (in net disbursement) in 2000 to number five since 2007, trailing the United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany among the 23 member states of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Japan's net ODA disbursement decreased again in 2012, keeping the country in the fifth place (Asahi shimbun online February 13, 2014). Japan ranks even lower in terms of ODA as share of gross national income, at twentieth in 2010 (Kokusai kaihatsu jannaru 2012). Japan maintained that low ranking in 2012 and its ODA per capita ranked eighteenth in 2012 (Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2014). And Japan has experienced two decades of economic slowdown, which have taken away the shine from the much touted Japanese model of development. But away from spotlight, Japan's ODA program has gone through major transformation in the past decade, with China factoring in heavily in the process…

No free trade agreements (FTAs) are devoid of security concerns. European integration, the golden standard for regionalism, started with a strong strategic interest in preventing repeat of wars through economic cooperation. Even when states try not to touch upon sensitive security issues in free trade negotiations, security provides the necessary stable environment for such an endeavor. And commercial liberals often argue that FTAs have a moderating effect on security tension among member states. The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) is a contemporary example of a strategic economic arrangement to serve a larger purpose of keeping the United States in East Asia and a rising China in check (possibly allowed in later on American terms)…

The following sections are included:

• Bibliography
• Index