China and Japan: Trouble Ahead?

Future stability in East Asia depends heavily on the relationship between the region's main powers, China and Japan. After normalizing their diplomatic relations 30 years ago, these two countries downplayed their differences in favor of mutually beneficial economics and cooperation against Soviet expansion. Following the demise of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and its strategic influence in East Asia, Japan and China initially continued to conduct their bilateral relations amicably. Recent friction, however, has strained the balance between them.

Rivalry for Asia

A negative trend in the Sino-Japanese relationship has prompted warnings of intensified rivalry for leadership in Asia. ¹ The rise of China's power and influence in Asian affairs in the 1990s and China's military assertiveness over Taiwan and the South China Sea coincided with a protracted period of lackluster Japanese economic performance and weak political leadership. The past disparity of the economic relationship between the two powers adds to ongoing differences over territorial, strategic, historical, and economic issues and has strengthened mutual wariness and antipathy.

Japanese opinion-makers have targeted China's increasing power as Japan's key long-term security concern. Many Japanese view China's size and remarkable economic growth as undercutting their country's leading economic role in Asia. Rising Japanese nationalism, generational change in Japanese leadership, and Beijing's loss of moral standing in the eyes of the Japanese have also contributed to this sentiment and diminished Japan's willingness to accommodate Chinese demands on historical and other issues. ²

On the other side, long-standing Chinese concerns about Japan's impressive military capabilities have increased since 1996 as a result of U.S.-Japanese agreements broadening Japan's strategic role in Asia to include recent Japanese naval deployments in the Indian Ocean. ³ Recent plans for a Japanese-U.S.-Australian strategic dialogue have elicited repeated expressions of concern from China. ⁴

Chinese leaders have appealed to nationalism and the sensibility that foreign aggressors have victimized China in the past. These feelings have largely focused on Japan, by far the most despised foreign aggressor in modern Chinese history, and have exacerbated Chinese antipathy toward Japan. ⁵ In this context, Chinese officials resent Japan's cuts in aid and reluctance to accommodate their country.

Heading the list of signs of increased Sino-Japanese friction in Asia are the seemingly competing proposals by China and Japan in late 2001 and early 2002 to establish free-trade agreements with the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). In addition, Japan's increased support for Taiwan and its cooperation with the Bush administration for stronger U.S. backing of Taiwan, including active dialogue by senior Japanese defense and foreign policy officials with their U.S. counterparts concerning Taiwan, have raised Chinese apprehension. ⁶ Chinese officials are worried that the planned Japanese-U.S.-Australian strategic dialogue may focus on Taiwan contingencies.

Other evidence of this friction includes the first significant cutbacks in Japanese aid to China since the normalization of bilateral relations and the stepped-up Japanese efforts to improve security, aid, and other cooperation with India and other nations on China's southern and western flanks. These efforts involve significant Japanese aid efforts in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In the face of China's steadily increasing economic ties with and political influence in South Korea, Japan also has made recent efforts to improve relations with Seoul.

A closer look at the two powers' recent approaches to Asia underscores China's growing influence and greater activism and Japan's relative decline. Consultations with dozens of Japanese media, academic, government, business, and other opinion leaders in four Japanese cities in May 2002 reflected a deepening anxiety over Japan's uncertain future in the face of China's continued remarkable economic growth and expanding military power and influence. Those interviewed believed that the expected continued stagnation in Japan's economic growth and a perceived "hollowing out" of Japanese manufacturing due to relocation to China...