Are China and Japan rivals in Latin America? A rivalry perception analysis

Abstract

This article investigates whether the People’s Republic of China and Japan perceive each other as rivals in Latin America (LA; both the Chinese and Japanese governments tend to refer to the region as Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), but for the purposes of this article we focus mainly on LA), and what impact such a perception might have on their foreign policy decision-making. We take LA as a case study because China’s and Japan’s recent (re-)engagement there began almost simultaneously in the early 2000s, and has developed against the background of domestic leadership transitions, growing demands for energy and markets, as well as international political agendas in which LA might play a key role. Developing the work of Thompson [(1995). Principal rivalries. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 39 (2), 195–223; (2001). Identifying rivals and rivalries in world politics. International Studies Quarterly, 45(4), 557–586] and Vasquez [(1993). The War Puzzle. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press; (1996). Distinguishing rivals that go to war from those that do not: Aa quantitative comparative case study of the two paths to war. International Studies Quarterly, 40 (4), 531–558] on rivalry, in combination with perception theory [Jervis, R. (1976). Perception and misperception in international politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press], the article suggests three indicators by which to measure the extent to which China and Japan might perceive each other as rivals. Drawing on content analysis of a range of Chinese- and Japanese-language official writing, news reports, and academic analysis, the article argues that, despite some media representation of China and Japan as competitors for resources and power in LA, in fact mutual perceptions concerning rivalry have not affected LA policy decisions of these two countries.

Keywords:

• China
• Japan
• Latin America
• perception
• rivalry
• foreign policy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Anja Ketels for her support in online research and part of the content analysis for the Chinese sources, and Chiho Maruoka for collating some of the Japanese media articles.

Notes

1 It should, however, be noted that the scramble among Mainland China and Taiwan for diplomatic relations to Latin American and Caribbean countries, and other parts of the world, paused during the presidency of Ma Ying-jeou in Taiwan from 2008 to 2016 because he pursued a policy of rapprochement toward the mainland.

2 Many Brazilian Nikkeijin return-migrated to Japan in the late 1980s in the wake of the Brazilian economic crisis, but faced difficulties in integrating into Japanese society. See Tsuda (1999).

3 For this analysis of the Chinese academic journals and newspaper articles we applied a mixed quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The original sources for the analysis were searched systematically in online databases for Chinese academic articles (China Academic Journals Full-text Database, CNKI). Twenty-two articles published between 1984 and 2015 were retrieved using the title keywords 日本拉美 [Japan Latin America] for the search. For the press analysis newspaper reports on Koizumi’s trip to LAC in 2004 and Abe’s trip to LA in 2014 were collected via google news search and Apabi (中国报纸资源全文数据库), a Chinese Newspaper Data base, with the title key words 日本拉美,小泉拉美 [Koizumi Latin America/America], 安倍拉美 [Abe Latin America]. Altogether 172 articles were retrieved. Out of these 172 articles, a sample of 50 articles was selected which included only articles which discussed the subject in more detail. A list of the articles used in the analysis is available on request from the authors. To distinguish the press clippings from other secondary sources we include the full date in the in-text citation.

4 A search of the Japanese journal articles database (Zasshi Kiji Sakuin) from 2000 to 2015 for the terms China and South America (中国・南米), China and Latin America (中国・ラテンアメリカ) and China and Central/South America (中国・中南米) recovered 64, 19 and 28 articles, respectively. These include academic journal articles as well as current affairs journals.

5 This term appears in Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs bluebooks. See, for example, https://www.mofa.go.jp/files/000177713.pdf.

6 An online news service run by the Fuji/Sankei group.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katja Levy

Katja Levy is assistant professor for Chinese politics and law at the Freie Universitaet, Berlin. She is a sinologist and political scientist by training. Her current research is twofold: on the one hand, she follows closely China’s engagement in Latin America and Europe. On the other hand, she is interested in state-society relations, social innovation and rule of law in China. She has published on Sino–German and Sino–LAC relations and is currently completing a monograph on Chinese charitable foundations.

Caroline Rose

Caroline Rose is professor of Sino–Japanese relations in the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Leeds. She has published widely on contemporary Sino–Japanese relations, with particular reference to textbook controversies, the Yasukuni Shrine issue and the history problem more broadly. She is currently completing a monograph on patriotic education reforms in China and Japan, and their impact on history and civics textbook content. She is also developing a new project on trust and friendship in Sino–Japanese relations.