GEB 1305

China and the World

Lecture 11

Mainland China and Modern Societies in the World:

Interactions between Modern China and the World

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China-Japan Relations

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China-Japan Relations - Political

• China’s relations with Japan have long been mixed.

• The end of the Cold War resulted in both an intensification of economic relations and
increasing hostility in the political, nationalist, and strategic dimensions of the
relationship.
• Japan had played a key role in helping the modernization of the Chinese economy in the
1980s and as China’s leading trader.

• It was also instrumental in reducing and eliminating most of the Western sanctions after
Tiananmen.

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China-Japan Relations - Political
• But Japan became the key target in the subsequent rise and dissemination of state-sponsored
Chinese nationalism.

• Attitudes on both sides hardened and China intensified its maritime pressure on the
Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, which were administered by Japan and claimed by China.

• The advent of Xi Jinping’s leadership in 2012 resulted in the restriction of anti-Japanese riots, which
had characterized the previous twenty years.

• But that did not signify a reduction in the hostility toward Japan displayed by the assertive new
leader

• The two major Asian countries, whose economies ranked second and third in the world, have
different fundamental interests and values. 4
China-Japan Relations - Political

• Above all, Japan is a crucial ally of the United States, which is pledged to treat the

Senkakus as the rest of Japan, which it is pledged to protect.

• Under the premiership of Shinzo Abe, Japan has become more militarily active within

the region and has increased its military spending to better defend its outer islands.

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China-Japan Relations - Economic

• However, the advent of Trump and his neo-mercantilist policy of “America First” and the

resulting trade wars with allies as well as competitors have brought Japan and China

somewhat closer together.

• President Xi and Prime Minister Abe held their first bilateral meeting on Chinese soil in

October 2018 and agreed to “cooperate” more than “compete.”

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China-Japan Relations - Taiwan
• Those differences also extend to Taiwan, where the memory of Japan’s colonization in the first
half of the twentieth century is on the whole positive, especially when compared to the wartime
memories of Korea and of China.

• Moreover, since Taiwan became a democracy, the relationship with Japan has been strengthened
by their sharing of common values.

• The modernization and the strengthening of China’s modern forces has had the effect of
increasing the strategic significance of Taiwan for Japan.

• Taiwan, with Japan, is an important barrier (together with the Philippines) in being able to deny
Chinese naval forces access to the Pacific Ocean in the event of a major military conflict involving
China and the United States.
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China–US Relations in a Changing Global Order

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Introduction

• From the Cold War era to the current day, the People's Republic of China's (PRC) relationship
with the United States has been one of considerable significance for global politics.

• As of 2017, the United States is the first and China the second largest economy in the world

• The US has the world's first and China the second largest defense budgets

• They are the top two emitters of carbon gases.

• China emerged in 2013 as the world's leading trading nation and since 2014 has become the
world's largest importer of oil.

• For the US, China ranks second only to North America as an export market.
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China–US Relations and Their Broader Significance

• The Chinese Communist Party victory in the civil war in China in 1949 marked a major
turning point in the Cold War.

• In many respects it served to globalize that East–West conflict, particularly once the
Korean War (1950–53) had brought US and Chinese military forces into direct contact on
the battlefield.

• In 1954, China helped support the successful North Vietnamese expulsion of the French
from Indochina.

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China–US Relations and Their Broader Significance
• Beijing took a stand against the United States in the two Taiwan straits crises of 1954–55 and 1958

• Established a formidable presence at the Bandung Conference in April 1955 among 28 Asian and
African nations.

• Its successful negotiation and championing of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence (mutual
respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in
internal affairs, equality and cooperation for mutual benefit, peaceful coexistence) with India in
1954 appealed to other countries fearful of intervention by the powerful in their internal affairs,
and keen to reinforce the sovereign legal equality of states (Chen, 2001).

• The PRC's early domestic gains post 1949 also served to unnerve governments in the West and
impress elsewhere. 11
China–US Relations and Their Broader Significance

• In response to these Chinese successes, the primary concern of US

administrations became to dent the growing prestige of the socialist bloc, and

especially of the PRC

• By the time of the Eisenhower administration, parts of the US political elite

had come to believe that many in Asia thought Chinese-style communism was

the ‘wave of the future’ (Foot, 1995: 197–202).

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China–US Relations and Their Broader Significance
• Chairman Mao Zedong's eventual successor, Deng Xiaoping, decided it imperative in late

1978 to push through radical economic reforms as well as political opening.

• Certainly there were serious economic and political tensions in the US–China relationship

in the 1980s and early 1990s, but overall Washington approached Beijing less as a looming

strategic and economic competitor and more as an economic opportunity and future

candidate for full membership in a US-led global system, difficult though that would be to

bring about. 13
China–US Relations and Their Broader Significance
• However, China's double-digit growth rates over several years, a steadily augmenting defense
budget, and a rapid increase in its membership of international organizations started to change
that depiction of Beijing's place in the global system.

• In the twenty years after 1977 it doubled its membership in formal international organizations and
joined over 1,000 international non-governmental organizations (Lampton, 2001: 163).

• From 1978 to 1999 China quadrupled its gross domestic product.

• It joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 and, between then and 2008, its exports grew by an
annual average of 29 per cent (Yao, 2015).

• In 2010, it went on to become second only to the United States in terms of the size of its economy.
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China–US Relations and Their Broader Significance
• Beijing also cemented relations overseas.

• In the 2000s it became the primary trading partner of most of its Asian neighbors, including several
of America's major formal and informal allies.

• It steadily emerged as a major aid donor and international investor

• Under President Xi Jinping Beijing has strenuously promoted its ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI),
aimed at strengthening China's bonds with the countries of Southeast and South Asia, Africa, and
Europe.

• Many assume that China, through the promise of the BRI, is starting to deploy its economic
strengths as a potential source of increased global and regional political influence to the detriment
of America's own. 15
China–US Relations and Their Broader Significance
• The overall effect of these changes in relative power has been to shift the terms of the intellectual
debate on China–US relations.

• From: China was being or could be socialized or shaped into supporting a US-led global order
(Johnston, 2008; Ikenberry, 2014; Christensen, 2015)

• To: China intends to displace US hegemony in the Asia-Pacific (Friedberg, 2011; White, 2012;
Mearsheimer, 2014; Shi, 2015), or indeed might come to dominate not just its region but the
twenty-first century world order itself (Jacques, 2012; Fenby, 2014).

• China began to be described as a global norm maker, or certainly a norm shaper, rather than simply
a norm taker (Foot, 2016; Zhang, Y., 2016).
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Policy Positions and the China–US Relationship
• For Chinese officials and analysts, there has been considerable continuity in the perception
of US policies and objectives.

• During the early Cold War, they emphasized US policies of hostile encirclement as reflected
most directly in the US alliance framework in the Asia-Pacific.

• Threatening too were US attempts to strike at the legitimacy of Chinese Communist Party
rule through Washington's support for an alternative Chinese government on the island of
Taiwan, and which represented itself as the Republic of China in major international
organizations
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Policy Positions and the China–US Relationship

• Interdependence, particularly in the economic field, together with deeper inter-societal linkages of

various kinds, as well as dozens of official bilateral dialogues (Glaser, 2014), do not seem markedly
to have diluted Chinese officials’ suspicions of the United States.

• Events that fed those suspicions in the early 2000s included:

• the granting of a visa in 1995 to the President of Taiwan and America's show of force in the

Taiwan Strait in 1996;

• the 1997 US–Japan revision of their defense guidelines agreement which gave Japan a larger

strategic role in the Asia-Pacific region;

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Policy Positions and the China–US Relationship

• IR scholar Shi Yinhong, based at Renmin University, and who in 2011 became a Counsellor
of the State Council of China, concluded that the majority among the Chinese political elite
‘hope for long-term accommodation with the United States, but seriously doubt its
probability’ (Shi, 2002).

• Later perspectives emphasized the persistence of ‘mutual strategic distrust’ of long-term

intentions (Lieberthal and Wang, 2012) despite constant contact at the highest levels and
across a range of policy areas (President Obama, for example, as of November 2016, had
met with Chinese Presidents on 18 occasions).

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Policy Positions and the China–US Relationship

• At the root of this corrosive distrust is said to be ‘different political traditions, value systems and

cultures; insufficient comprehension and appreciation of each others’ policymaking processes and

relations between the government and other entities; and a perception of a narrowing gap in

power between the United States and China’ (Lieberthal and Wang, 2012: xi).

• Wang Jisi, the doyen among Chinese analysts of the relationship with America, reports that there

remain deep-seated fears in China that the United States wishes to prevent China becoming a great

power and harbors a continuing desire to interfere in its internal affairs (Lieberthal and Wang,

2012: 7)
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Policy Positions and the China–US Relationship

• China's ‘Belt and Road initiative’ ‘could help redirect the centre of geopolitical gravity away

from the US and back to Eurasia’ (Wang Yiwei, quoted in Economy, 2016).

• Another policy direction, promoted strongly by Presidents Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping, has

been to try to establish with the United States a ‘new era in great power relations', one

where Chinese ‘core interests’ are respected and mutual accommodation prevails.
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Conclusion

• The domestic economic priorities in both countries, the economic

interdependence between them, as well as an awareness of the high stakes

involved were there to be a Sino-American conflict or conflict involving one of

Washington's formal Asian allies, still act as mutual constraints on behavior

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References

• Foot, R. (2018) “China–US Relations in a Changing Global Order ”, in W. Wu &

M. W. Frazier (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Contemporary China. SAGE
Publications Ltd.

• Yahuda, M. (2020) “China’s Relations with Asia”. In Shambaugh, D. L.

(eds) China and the World. New York : Oxford University Press.

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