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asia responds to
its rising powers
China and India
Edited by
Ashley J. Tellis, Travis Tanner, and Jessica Keough
Japan
Japan, India, and
the Strategic Triangle with China
Michael J. Green
executive summary
This chapter examines Japans relations with and strategies toward China
and India.
main argument:
Though Japan is declining in relative power, its strategic response to the rise
of China and India will have a significant impact on the balance of power in
Asia. After years of distant relations, Japan is increasingly turning to India
as a counterweight to China, encouraging Indian participation in the East
Asia Summit and moving forward on security and nuclear cooperation
talks. Japanese corporations are also shifting future investment plans from
China to India (and other developing Asian economies) to hedge against
growing political and economic risk in China. The Japan-India relationship
is still hampered by New Delhis lingering Nehruvian socialism and
nonalignment ideology and Japans own anti-nuclear allergies and political
malaise, but the trend of closer alignment will continue to increase the
strategic equilibrium in Asia as China rises.
policy implications:
External balancing strategies are insufficient to prevent further waning
of Japans influence in Asia; economic reform and revitalization, defense
spending increases, and more credible political leadership are also needed.
Japan must work on establishing stable political linkages and crisis
management channels with Beijing.
The U.S. should encourage closer Japan-India alignment by realizing
calls for an official trilateral strategic dialogue and enhancing trilateral
military exercises, while reiterating U.S. interests in improved relations
among all the regions powers, including China.
The tragic earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disasters of March 2011 will put
downward pressure on Japans economic and political performance in the
near term but could be positively transformative in the medium to long term.
Japan
Historical Context
For the first two millennia of its history, Japans strategic worldview
was shaped by the Sinocentric system in Asia. When China was weak,
Japan expanded. When China was strong, Japan was restrained. After
the imposition of Western imperialism on Asia and the end of Japans
so-called closed state period (sakoku jidai) in the nineteenth century,
Japanese statecraft added a new card to its deckalignment with the
worlds hegemonic power, first with Britain, then with Germany (with brief
and tragic consequences), and finally with the United States. This strategy
enhanced Japanese power against other states in the system, while giving
Japan maximum latitude to develop its own foreign and economic policies
within Asia.
It was precisely this latitude that the architect of Japans postwar foreign
policy strategy, Shigeru Yoshida, sought vis--vis Communist China
after World War II. Under the Yoshida Doctrine, Japan would align with
the United States and oppose Communism in principle but would avoid
becoming entrapped in any U.S. conflict with Beijing. Prime Minister
Yoshida, who had served in China as a diplomat before the war, believed
that China would eventually split from the Soviet Union and reach an
entente with Japan based on commercial ties. Japanese political elites were
divided on the question of China, with mainstream politicians in the LDP
following Yoshidas line and anti-mainstream politicians (including the
fathers and grandfathers of Prime Ministers Junichiro Koizumi and Shinzo
Abe) arguing for closer ties with Taiwan, revision of the pacifist Article
Nine of Japans Constitution, and more explicit security ties with the West.
Yoshidas view prevailed, however, as successive Japanese governments
used Article Nine to construct policy and legislative obstacles to military
cooperation with the United States in Asia. Meanwhile, Japanese firms began
trading with the PRC through the 1963 Liao-Takasaki agreement, pushing
the envelope of commercial relations with the mainland even before official
ties were established immediately after President Richard Nixon opened
U.S. relations with China in 1972 (the United States would take another
seven years to normalize relations with Beijing). Japan continued hewing
closer to the PRC than the United States did over the next two decades,
expanding investment in China after the appreciation of the yen in the 1985
Plaza Accord and then serving as a bridge between Beijing and Washington
in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square incident on June 4, 1989. By
the early 1990s, Japan was Chinas largest trading partner and China was
second only to the United States in terms of Japans trade. Japanese strategic
writers began to anticipate a more balanced U.S.-Japan-China triangle after