A new dynamism in Sino-Japanese security relations: Japan's strategic use of foreign aid

Abstract

In November 2004 a Chinese nuclear submarine cruised into Japan's territorial waters near the Okinawa Islands. In response, the Japanese government dispatched several Japanese naval ships and planes to chase the Chinese submarine until it navigated into international waters. This event, which potentially could have become the first exchange of fire between Japan and China since the Second World War, illuminated increasingly problematic security relations between the two neighbouring countries in the twenty-first century. In fact, deterioration of Sino-Japanese security relations is not a recent phenomenon but has already been evident since the mid-1990s, when Japan imposed a series of economic sanctions on China. Between 1995 and 2000 Japan had suspended its foreign aid to China in protest against: China's nuclear weapons tests; China's large scale war game including the launch of missiles across the Taiwan Strait; and Chinese naval activities in disputed areas in the East China Sea. This article looks at Sino-Japanese security relations since the mid-1990s through three case studies of the aid sanctions imposed by Japan on China. It clarifies the domestic political and bureaucratic interests that motivated aid sanctions and determined the decision-making process leading to these sanctions. The article argues, that with certain politico-security interests, Japanese governments actively used foreign aid as a strategic instrument to counter provocative military actions by China in the East Asian region since the mid-1990s. Despite the limited influence that Japanese aid sanctions have actually had on Chinese military behaviour, Japan's strategic use of foreign aid has undeniably created a new dynamism in security relations between the two neighbouring great powers in Asia.

Keywords:

• Sino-Japanese relations
• Japanese foreign policy
• foreign aid
• nuclear tests
• Taiwan Strait crisis
• East China Sea.

Dr Tsukasa Takamine is Research Fellow in the School of Asian Studies at the University of Auckland and Research Associate of the Asia Research Centre at Murdoch University, Australia. His areas of research interest include Japanese foreign and security policy, Japanese politics, Sino-Japanese relations and political economy of the Asia Pacific. He has published most recently in Japanese Studies. Currently he is a member of the Japan Association of International Relations (JAIR), the Australian Political Studies Association (APSA) and the Japanese Political Science Association (JPSA).

Notes

1. In this article the exchange rate of (US$1 = = ¥110) is used to convert Japanese yen into US dollars.

2. Interview with A, a senior official of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tokyo, 20 March 2000. Apart from the names of scholars, the names of government and party officials the author interviewed are not specified in this article due to considerations of confidentiality.

3. Interview with Kayahara Ikuo, a Japanese defence analyst specializing on the PRC, formerly in the Japanese Defence Agency and currently at Takushoku University, Tokyo, 4 April 2001; interview with Yabuki Susumu, a China analyst at Yokohama City University, Yokohama, 23 March 2001.

4. These critics contend that Japanese development assistance to China has supported Chinese military power by indirectly subsidizing the country's defence budget and by helping to construct many airports, ports, railways, highways and telecommunication facilities in China. According to them, this infrastructure can be used for military as well as civilian purposes.

5. Interview with A, 20 March 2000.

6. The author created this diagram based on information presented in (Amako 1997: 3–22).

7. Japan's ODA (foreign aid) principles are: (1) environmental conservation and development should be pursued in tandem; (2) any use of ODA for military purposes or for aggravation of international conflicts should be avoided; (3) full attention should be paid to trends in recipient countries' military expenditures, their development and production weapons of mass destruction and missiles, and their export and import of armaments; and (4) full attention should be paid to efforts to promote democratization, the introduction of a market-oriented economy, and the securing of basic human rights and freedoms in the recipient country. Japan states that it will provide ODA in accordance with these four principles.

8. Although, as Long points out, the US and Belgium also temporarily suspended ‘export credits’ to China (Long, 1999: 335), such credits are not counted as foreign aid (ODA) but as other official flow (OOF).

9. Interview with A, Tokyo, 14 March 2001.

10. Tomohiko Taniguchi contends that this Japanese policy remains unchanged until now. See Taniguchi 2005, 456–7.

11. Interview with B, a senior official of the Liberal Democratic Party, Tokyo, 27 March 2001.

12. Interview with A, 20 March 2000.