Japan's Relations with China: Facing a Rising Power (review)

Lam Peng Er's edited volume makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of Japan's relations with China and of East Asian international relations. The book is both narrower and broader in coverage than recent works on Sino-Japanese relations. It focuses only on the Japanese perspective without considering Chinese views (except in one chapter), but it includes chapters discussing substate actors and the perspectives of Malaysia, Southeast Asia, and Russia.¹

The book originated from a conference held in August 2002. Some chapters are not as up-to-date as others, but most of the analyses have held up well against the test of time. As a case in point, David Arase's chapter discusses Japan's decision to make a deep cut in yen loans to China in the 2002 fiscal year but not its subsequent decision, reached by the end of 2004, to phase out overseas development assistance (ODA) to China by 2008. But the reasons Arase cites for the reduction in ODA—Japan's concern about China's growing military capabilities and strategic intention, Japan's fiscal crisis, bureaucratic failure, a generational change, aid fatigue, China's own aid program, and worsening ties with China (pp. 93–95)—also apply to Tokyo's eventual decision to completely halt the yen loans. Arase is right that it is too late for Japan to use ODA as a policy tool to pressure China because China no longer depends on Japanese loans. Japan was able to end its loans to China without creating resentment in Beijing. In a joint press communiqué issued during Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to Japan in April 2007, the Japanese and Chinese governments agreed that Japanese yen loans to China, which will end in 2008, had made a positive contribution to Chinese economic development and Japan-China economic cooperation. Arase is also right that the noncontroversial ending does not necessarily bode well for the relationship because it simply means Japan will have to find other policy tools to use in pressuring China, such as expanding its own security capabilities (p. 103). One might add that whereas Japan can no longer use ODA to pressure China directly, it may still see value in using ODA as a means to strengthen relations with third countries to compete with China and to keep China in check. This explains, for example, why Japan has increased yen loans to India.

Kokubun Ryo¯sei's chapter provides a lucid, balanced analysis of how Japan's relations with China have shifted from the stable framework established in the 1972 negotiations to normalize diplomatic relations to the current fluctuating state of affairs fraught with uncertainty and tension. He emphasizes the end of the cold war, greater economic interdependence between China and Japan, generational change, and Taiwan's democratization as crucial causal factors for Japan's changing relations with China.

Kokubun does not focus on the management or mismanagement of the relationship. Rather, he suggests ways to improve it. By offering specific policy suggestions for cooperation (pp. 33–34), Kokubun demonstrates a tendency common among influential Japanese and Chinese thinkers on the bilateral relationship to often play dual roles of observers and participants. The Lam volume came out before Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo¯'s visit to Beijing in October 2006. Thus, although a scholar's suggestions for cooperation seemed like wishful thinking when the book was published and relations were deteriorating, they look prescient now. The Japan-China relationship is more than an academic exercise. At some point, efforts have to be made to move beyond past views of who was wrong and right.

In her chapter, Kamachi Noriko explains why people like Kokubun engaged in normative discussion rather than just being analytical. "For Ja-panese academics, the Chinese giant is much more than merely a research object to satisfy their intellectual curiosity" (p. 62). At the same time, Japanese scholars need to "keep a...