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Foreign Affairs
China and Japan's Simmering Rivalry
Kent E. Calder
Summary: Although Japan and China have close economic ties, their diplomatic relations have been strained by clashing interests and cultural friction. The United States has an important role to play in promoting cooperation between Tokyo and Beijing and helping them adjust to a new phase in East Asia's history.
Kent E. Calder is Director of the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at SAIS, Johns Hopkins University.
THE GREAT ILLUSIONChina and Japan, the giants of Asia, account for nearly three-quarters of the region's economic activity and more than half of the region's military spending. Despite their deep economic ties and a doubling of their bilateral trade in the past five years, their relationship is increasingly strained, with dangerous implications for the United States and the world at large.
Historically, relations between Japan and China were clearly structured. One country was always more prosperous or powerful than the other. Before the nineteenth century, China was usually dominant; since the Meiji Restoration, in 1868, Japan has generally been preeminent. The prospect that China and Japan could both be powerful and affluent at the same time has only recently emerged, largely because while China's economy and influence have grown rapidly, Japan's have remained stagnant. China has nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles, and its military budget has grown by double-digit rates for 17 consecutive years. Although Japan has a relatively low military profile, with its "no-war" constitution and strong alliance with the United States, its defense-relevant technology is sophisticated and it has recently become more proactive. The stage is now set for a struggle between a mature power and a rising one.
Some liken current Sino-Japanese relations to the Anglo-German rivalry prior to World War I. As with the United Kingdom and Germany a century ago, the contest for regional leadership between China and Japan today is creating new security dilemmas, prompting concerns over Chinese ambitions in Japan and fears of renewed Japanese militarism in China. Both states are adopting confrontational stances, partly because of rising popular involvement in politics and resurgent nationalism exacerbated by revived memories of World War II; mutually beneficial economic dealings alone are not effectively soothing these tensions. Fluid perceptions of power and fear, Thucydides observed, are the classic causes of war. And they are increasingly present in Northeast Asia today.
PAIR OF RIVALS
Many contentious issues confront China and Japan. Among the most pressing is their thirst for energy. Japan depends on imports for 99 percent of its oil and natural gas; coastal China is similarly bereft of resources. Thus, the offshore oil and gas fields under the East China Sea are attractive "domestic" sources of energy for both Beijing and Tokyo -- and both have laid claim to them. China argues that the entire East China Sea continental shelf, extending eastward nearly all the way to Okinawa, is a "natural prolongation" of the Chinese mainland. Japan has declared its boundary to be a median line between its undisputed territory and China -- a line that runs roughly 100 miles west of the Okinawa Trough, which lies undersea just west of Okinawa and is where the richest petroleum deposits in the area are believed to be concentrated.
The conflict began escalating in May 2004 when China started serious exploratory operations in the Chunxiao gas fields, only four kilometers from the median line. Actions by both parties have since raised tensions. In November 2004, a Chinese nuclear-powered attack submarine intruded into ...