Japan’s strategic response to China’s geo-economic presence: quality infrastructure as a diplomatic tool

Abstract

In the new millennium, Japan found a renewed interest in infrastructure investment and engaged in this policy issue with diplomatic initiatives and external partnerships with due attention to China’s geo-economic presence. In formulating strategies for infrastructure investment, Japan has presented and disseminated a specific idea of ‘quality infrastructure’ as a principal component of its external infrastructure push. This article seeks to trace the evolution of Japan’s ideational principles for quality infrastructure and elucidate policy motivation, policy objective, and external influence. It argues that Japan’s advocacy of quality infrastructure derived from domestic impetus to expand infrastructure exports and external impetus to compete against China’s infrastructural push through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Japan advocated quality infrastructure as a strategic tool to pursue multiple policy objectives that shifted from justifying Japanese infrastructural push to using as means to check and accommodate the BRI, and to legitimising common governance principles for infrastructure investment. In relations to external influence, Japan’s persistence in norm-setting encouraged China to incorporate normative principles first at business dialogues and then embed common governance principles in its policy approach to infrastructure investment.

Keywords:

• Infrastructure investment
• belt and road initiative
• Sino-Japanese relations
• ideational principles
• APEC
• G20 Osaka Summit

Acknowledgement

The author thanks the reviewers of The Pacific Review for their helpful comments on the earlier version of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hidetaka Yoshimatsu

Hidetaka Yoshimatsu (Ph.D, Australian National University) is a Professor of Politics and International Relations at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Japan, as well as Visiting Research Fellow, University of Adelaide, Australia. His recent publications include Japan’s Asian Diplomacy: Power Transition, Domestic Politics, and Diffusion of Ideas (Palgrave Macmillan 2020) and Comparing Institution-Building in East Asia: Power Politics, Governance, and Critical Junctures (Palgrave Macmillan 2014). His current research interests include Japan’s foreign and security policy and regionalism in the Indo-Pacific. He has published articles that focus on regionalism in the Asia-Pacific and Japan’s foreign policy in numerous journals, including The Pacific Review, Contemporary Politics, Australian Journal of International Affairs, and New Political Economy.