Japan and Greater China: Political Economy and Military Power in the Asian Century (review)

The theme of this book, the relationship between Japan and China, is of great relevance to development in Asia and indeed to the world at large. This relationship is, as the writers point out, a highly asymmetrical as well as a complex and emotional one. The book assesses this relationship at the start of the twenty-first century by looking at how the mutual interactions of these two countries have shaped or been shaped by domestic and international circumstances. It seeks to go beyond a documentation of what either of the two governments does with regard to the other. It seeks to explain why they have pursued their respective policies in bilateral relations and to ascertain how these relations affect the domestic and international priorities of each and how any adjustment of these priorities then feeds back into the bilateral relations.

This is a wider approach than what is usually taken; the authors claim that traditional approaches to the theory of international relations that analyze military or security imperatives independent of domestic social and economic imperatives are inadequate to explain great-power relations in today's complex world. The relationship revealed in their research in this sense speaks to issues relating to theories of political economy and of military power. The authors do not really address these theoretical issues, however, but instead offer the reader a picture of the Chinese-Japanese relationship from a variety of angles.

This study is based on the authors' collaborative research over a five-year period, with numerous visits to both Japan and China. The research is thorough, and the book contains an abundance of references to secondary sources on both countries.

The authors begin with a chapter positioning Japan and China relative to the global order, following an introduction on lessons from history focusing on four major issues: interests, structures, institutions, and norms. We are presented four different stories of the relationship relative to the global order, but, to a certain extent, these four are interrelated, which means that there is also a considerable amount of overlapping and repetition. Chapter 2 is about images and attitudes and again brings us back to the issue of wartime history but from a different angle; it then continues with a discussion of public opinion and cultural relations. The third and fourth chapters deal comprehensively with bilateral security relations and the issue of Taiwan, and they consider the role of the United States in the relationship.

The next chapter concerns the nature of Japan's foreign aid to China and starts off with the statement that Japanese development assistance to China is, in political terms, the single most important dimension of economic relations between the two countries. This is a highly questionable statement considering the fact that total foreign aid only amounts to 0.2 percent of Chinese GNP. Foreign direct investment as well as trade are much more important dimensions of the economic relationship.

In assessing the impact of the China aid program on Japan's economic interests, two levels of analysis are used, and these are related to the different motivations involved. One is that aid fosters friendly relations and the other that it provides opportunities for Japanese business firms. This is a far too simplistic view. Improved infrastructure, financed with aid money, in the form of roads, railways, ports, and power plants has been necessary for the industrialization of China. This infrastructure has enabled firms from Japan, as well as from other countries, to start production in China by utilizing an abundant labor supply that allows the firms to cut costs. The potential market of a more developed China also has had an impact on Japanese economic interests. The history of this aid relationship gets detailed coverage, but the chapter would have profited from an updating of more recent developments. The table showing the sector allocation of aid...