Rivalry in the Middle East? Japan’s CEAPAD initiative and China’s rise

Abstract

Ever since the so-called rise of China has started, Sino-Japanese relations have been increasingly described as a rivalry between both states. For the most part, this assumed rivalry has been analyzed on the global level or within the boundaries of the East Asian region, while the consequences of this rivalry for other world regions, such as the Middle East, have been largely neglected in the literature. In order to fill this gap, this article investigates how China’s growing presence in the Middle East, and in particular regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, influences Japan’s own foreign policy in this troubled region. It utilizes a modified concept of the strategic rivalry approach, called ‘asymmetric rivalry’, which challenges the widespread notion that rivalry needs to be mutually perceived by both sides and thus analyzes the assumed Sino-Japanese rivalry in the Middle East from a Japanese perspective. By focusing on the case of Japan’s CEAPAD initiative, which aims at coordinating East Asian countries’ developmental assistance towards the Palestinian Authority while deliberately excluding China, the present article shows that the perception of Japan’s foreign policy elite of China as a rival decisively influences how Japan’s foreign policy is shaped in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Keywords:

• Japan
• China
• strategic rivalry
• Israel
• Palestine
• Middle East

Acknowledgements

For great support for the project and useful comments on earlier drafts of this article, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Nissim Otmazgin, Yoram Evron, David Chiavacci, Shogo Suzuki, Greg Noble, Yitzak Shichor, Galia Press-Barnathan, Corey Wallace, Raquel Shaoul, Richard Samuels, Sheldon Garon, Paul O’Shea, Ra Mason, Karl Gustafsson, Tal Dranitzki, Neda Noraie-Kia, Yiftach Har-Gil and the reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

List of interviews

Interview I: anonymous, head of a Japanese state institution in Tel Aviv, Israel on November 2, 2014.

Interview II: anonymous, Israeli political analyst in Jerusalem on November 3, 2014.

Interview III: anonymous, representative of a Japanese state institution in Ramallah, Palestine on November 30, 2014.

Interview IV: anonymous, head of a Japanese state institution in Tel Aviv, Israel on April 29, 2015.

Interview V: anonymous, representative of a Japanese state institution in Tel Aviv on May 8, 2015.

Interview VI: anonymous, representative of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah on May 21, 2015

Interview VII: anonymous, representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the State of Israel in Jerusalem on May 27, 2015.

Interview VIII: Ambassador of the State of Israel in Japan in Tokyo on April 7, 2016.

Interview IV: anonymous, Japanese political analyst in Tokyo on April 7, 2016.

Interview X: anonymous, senior representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan in Tokyo on April 8, 2016.

Interview XI: anonymous, Japanese political analyst in Tokyo on April 8, 2016.

Interview XII: anonymous, Japanese political analyst in Tokyo on April 11, 2016.

Interview XIII: anonymous, Japanese political analyst in Tokyo on April 12, 2016

Interview XIV: anonymous, Japanese Ambassador/special envoy in Tokyo on April 13, 2016.

Interview XV: anonymous, representative of the State of Israel in Japan on April 13, 2016.

Notes

1 Due to the sensitivity of political processes between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Sino-Japanese relations as well as all other parties involved, the interviewees want to stay anonymous and not to be quoted directly. I will quote the interviews indirectly by their number. Details about the interviews and interviewees can be found in the list of interviews in the references.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kai Schulze

Kai Schulze is currently postdoctoral researcher at Freie Universität Berlin. From 2014 to 2015, he was Louis Frieberg Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Between 2010 and 2014, he was affiliated with the Institute for East Asian Studies and the Center for Area Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. Prior to joining the Freie Universität Berlin in 2010, he was a PhD student at the Institute of East Asian Studies (INEAST) at the University of Duisburg-Essen, and a visiting scholar at the German Institute of Japanese Studies (DIJ) in Tokyo.