70526 }
Reassuring and Unnerving the Neighbors: Japan
Japan: Pressure Overwhelms Reassurance
There is a bifurcation of Chinese interests toward Japan similar to that which
exists for China’s relations with the United States. On the one hand, Japan is
extremely important to China’s economic development drive, accounting for
a large portion of China’s total trade and foreign investment. Japan is also a
significant power that for half a century was China’s rival for regional pre-
eminence. This suggests that if China is to achieve preeminence in East Asia,
perhaps as a stepping stone to global power, it will need to win over Japan,
make it comfortable with China’s growing power and ready to accept a role
under China’s shadow. All this suggests friendship diplomacy intended to
court Japan. On the other hand, there are three structural divides separating
China and Japan: competitive military modernization, overlapping maritime
defense zones, and Japan’s alliance with the United States. Regarding rival
military development, during the 1990s both China and Japan pushed for-
ward with military modernization, though China did so at a far more rapid
pace. Some reasons for China’s military modernization effort were outlined
in earlier chapters. For Japan, international criticism of Japan’s mere “check-
book diplomacy” during the international effort in 1991 to restore Kuwait’s
sovereignty, plus a growing desire to be a “normal country” with political
influence more commensurate with its economic power, plus the 1996 Taiwan
Strait crisis and the realization that Japanese refusal to support the United
States in the event of such a conflict would probably spell the effective end
of Japan’s alliance with the United States, all led to a steady augmentation of
Japan’s military capabilities.^1
Many of the growing military capabilities of China and Japan were focused
on the maritime dimension, especially submarine and antisubmarine and
missile and antimissile capabilities. Each country viewed its own buildup
as defensive and the other’s as threatening. In a re-evaluation of maritime
defense strategy in the mid-1980s, China’s defense planners established a