While modern day Asian states certainly do not fancy a return to this hierarchy, the resilience of that system highlights key facts about the nature of securitization in East Asia. First, China has historically enjoyed the role of a benevolent and civilized leader to the rest of Asia. It has as much interest in stabilizing the region for ideological reasons as well as for real-politik reasons. Second, the rest of East Asia has shown the willingness to seek security and pace by appeasing larger powers in the region. Third, East Asia has never experienced a situation where more than one legitimate regional superpower exists during peacetime. The uncertainty facing how a traditionally one-party security regime should accommodate multiple powers is at the heart of issues facing international relations of East Asia.
Japan’s Relations with Great Powers and its Role in Regionalism
This uncertainty is compounded by Japan’s ambivalent attitude toward regionalism. Its tendency to avoid a leadership role has created a power vacuum which neither the U.S., for its status as a non-East-Asian country, or China, for its (current) lack of economic power, could quite assume. Japan’s role in future regionalism will heavily depend on its relations with other great powers, most notably China and the U.S.
Few East Asians could forget the events of the early 20th century. The arrival of Western imperial powers in the mid 19th century marked the rise of Japan starting with the the Meiji restoration and the demise of China starting with the Opium Wars. China’s defeats in Korea and Manchuria at the hand of Japan were even more humiliating than subjugation by Western powers because not far back Japan was just a tributary state. China was suddenly of its inferiority on all fronts, for its size, population, and virtue-based superiority were no match for the material power of a tiny island called Japan. Japan’s occupation of Manchuria in 1932 and full-out invasion of China in 1937 marked the height of China’s century of national humiliation. Japan’s war crimes in WW2 remain a sticking point in its relations with China. Mass killings and rape were among the many atrocious acts that Japan performed during WWII. During the Nanking Massacre alone, the Japanese Army allegedly killed 100,000-200,000 people and raped 80,000 women. Territorial disputes resulting from WWII also remain a hot topic as both countries are increasingly willing to use warships and aircraft to patrol disputed areas like the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Japan’s post-WWII alliance with the U.S. also featured prominently in major Chinese strategic considerations. Japan was a potential threat not only because of its economic might but also its strategic location. The U.S. could use these sea lanes to defend Taiwan.
Since the end of the Cold War, Sino-Japanese relations have experienced more ups and downs. Most notably, Japan’s perceived unapologetic stance for its aggression in WWII has belied its official apology and sparked tremendous protests by foreign countries. Since Class A war criminals were enshrined into the Yasukuni, several high-level Japanese politicians, including former PM Koizumi and PM Abe (before he took office), have visited the shrine on official capacity. Their visits coincided with the construction of large museum inside the shrine that glorifies that war and the approval of revisionist textbooks. Several diplomatic meetings have been cancelled as a result. Furthermore, public opinions regarding the other country have reached an all-time low in both nations. Where history has discouraged diplomatic progress, economic integration has promoted it. As the Chinese economy took off, Japan entered its lost decade. Dire economic situation caused Japanese investors to look to China. Japan has become a major foreign investor in China; only second to the U.S. Japanese trade with China between 1996 and 2006 grew by 236%. China’s trade relationship with Japan has not been as antagonistic as with the U.S. largely because their economies are more complementary, with the trade balance slightly favoring Japan. Japan’s changing domestic political landscape might also work to thaw the tension. In 2009, the Democratic Party of Japan displaced the Liberal Democratic Party, who has consistently supported the U.S.-Japan security arrangement throughout its virtually uninterrupted post-WWII rule. While PM Hatoyama has expressed a desire to deepen alliance with the U.S., the Okinawa base issue and the cancellation of refueling missions in the Indian Ocean have put the alliance at risk, a development welcomed by Beijing.
Historical legacies as well as practical threats, however, have not driven Japan toward balancing against China. Instead, Japan is pursuing a strategy of hedging. Deepening economic integration with China has both practical and strategic interests. Japan has also pursued greater relations with nearby powers such as India and Australia. Since WWII, Japan has been an empirical anomaly that plagues conventional IR literature. Its defense budget has remained stable at 1% of GDP. Despite its economic might, Japan has not aimed to overtake the U.S., assumed an active leadership role in the region, nor even adopted the posture of a superpower. Despite its manufacturing and technological superiority, Japan has not rearmed or produced sophisticated offensive weapons. While Japanese popular culture has spread far and wide, its societal values are well-isolated inside Japan and its society remains relatively closed off to immigrants. The most Japan has engaged in with other countries in the region is through Foreign Direct Investments and Official Development Assistance, all of which come with virtually no political preconditions. Considering Japan’s history, it makes sense to downgrade Japan to the status of a status-quo secondary power. Japan’s insular position has kept it relatively isolated and safe from outside threats. Japan imposed a policy of self-isolation in the 17th due to the fear of being undermined by foreigners. Even its venture into World War II was largely driven by the obsession for autarky en route to maintaining national security. Its aggression during WWII should be seen as anomaly and not representative of traditional Japanese society. Unlike China, Japan has never attempted to project its power over the region for the sake of ideological influence. Instead, Japan’s foreign policies are highly motivated by pragmatic concerns.
Japan has very little reason to fear for its survival. While the rise of China is threatening, Japan’s geography, defensive capability and U.S. alliance will deter direct Chinese threats. China is therefore unlikely to feature as the top concern for Japan in the short term. Japan is more concerned with two issues: the future of U.S. alliance and constitutional revision. Both issues will have more implications for Sino-Japanese relations and regional security landscape than any unilateral policy. Many Japanese have protested the Constitution ever since it was drafted in 1946 by Allied forces. One particularly controversial issue is Article 9, which renounces the right to maintain armed forces and to use violence as a means of settling international disputes. While interpretation of Article 9 has become increasingly liberal, allowing for Japan to expand its military, its renunciation will be necessary for Japan to obtain any offensive capability. Should the Constitution be amended, it would certainly be accompanied/caused by fundamental changes in U.S.-Japan alliance. In the 1980’s, the U.S. repeatedly criticized Japan for failing to assume more burden of maintaining global security. While some of the criticism had more to do with the fact that the American economy was losing ground quickly, Japan indeed did not want to assume a more substantial role in maintain world order despite benefiting from the U.S.’s security umbrella. Ironically, Japanese statement had brought up Article 9 multiple times as an excuse for not rearming and assisting the U.S. militarily. A revision of strategic outlooks would be at the core of the forthcoming review of U.S.-Japan alliance, along with the Okinawa base issue. The outcomes of these two concerns will decide what role Japan will have in the regional order. A more independent Japan might rearm and seek a more active role in regional affairs as means of containing China and protecting its security.
Sino-ASEAN Relations
Relations between great and small powers are also an important part of the East Asian regional order, especially because North Korea, Taiwan, and the ASEAN collective have enjoyed immense leverages despite their sizes.
Relations with China are at the forefront of ASEAN leaders’ agenda and the reverse is becoming increasingly true as well. China and Southeast Asian countries have shared a mixed history of cooperation and competition and their foreign goals toward each other are not so clear-cut either. While Southeast Asian countries seek to restrain Chinese dominance over the region in the long run, they are also aware of the importance of a strong China for regional prosperity. Therefore, ASEAN states do not prefer a scenario in which there is a disruptive end to the current U.S.-China status quo. A heavy handed American attack on China regarding any number of issues like Taiwan, human rights, democratization would surely upset regional stability. An American draw-down, on the other hand, would allow China a free hand, especially in the South China Sea, where China and all but one Southeast Asian country currently lay claim.
For China, its grand strategy of avoiding conflicts while building up comprehensive national power will surely require the cooperation of Southeast Asian states. Perceiving Southeast Asia to be weak points that can be exploited by the U.S., China seeks to maintain exert its dominance over the region to make sure that these countries would generally fall in line with Chinese policies. Settling the disputes over the South China Sea also remains a top priority for China. Its history of unilateral aggression over this maritime territory has caused tensions with ASEAN countries. Vietnam recently became the latest Southeast East Asian states to acquire advanced jetfighters and submarines as a response to China’s patrolling of disputed territories in the Spratly Archipelago. Southeast Asia is also important as trade partners to China, evident in the recently operation China-ASEAN Free Trade Area.
It is not difficult to witness the delicate balance that both sides must strike to achieve the goals. For ASEAN, what is the best way of supporting a prosperous China while avoiding its future dominance? This challenge is doubly challenging because of the diverse strategic outlooks regarding China. Thailand has traditionally enjoyed the influence of China, especially during Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia, while Vietnam, and to a lesser extent Indonesia and Malaysia, have always seen China as their main threats. For China, what is the best way of dominating weaker powers without allowing them to drift into the U.S.’s sphere of influence? ASEAN and Chinese interests are not completely distinct but they don’t necessarily overlap either. At the heart of this issue is an irreconcilable difference: the ability to dominate sub-regional affairs.
The relations between Southeast Asia states and China are marred by historical legacies as well. The ability to influence, and at times coerce, weaker powers in the region is both of ideological and pragmatic interests to China. Its return to superpower status would not be complete without surrounding countries’ acceptance of their inferiority to China, the same goal the tributary system was essentially designed to accomplish. As a mainland country, China’s natural sphere of influence is the Southeast Asian sub-region and without this sphere, China cannot make a legitimate claim to be a major global power. China’s early attempt to gauge their dominance was a failure as its desire to “teach Vietnam a lesson” in 1979 failed to have any impact on Vietnam’s policy in Cambodia. In fact, Vietnam remained in Cambodia for 10 years until the collapse of the USSR and internal economic turmoil forced a revision of its foreign policy agenda. Southeast Asia, on the other hand, has grown to explicitly reject external influence. Decades of subjugation by European colonial powers have sparked fierce nationalism and self-determinism. ASEAN explicitly incorporates these elements into its Treaty of Amity and Cooperation. Its practice, in general, has been to encourage cooperative ventures with external powers as long as they don’t have negative implications for sovereignty and regional self-determination. Despite having no formal security arrangements, ASEAN’s diplomatic culture and strongly worded collective goals regarding sovereignty serve as a power instrument to maintain regional self-determination.
The end of Cold War sparked new conditions that also affect China-ASEAN relations. While the collapse of the USSR removed the ideological polarization that has plagued Southeast Asia for decades, it also created a power vacuum, one that China was prime to assume. The draw-down of both the U.S. and USSR militarily posed serious security concerns for all Southeast Asian states, regardless of their political orientations. Furthermore, the failure of socialism as an economic model drove some countries, Vietnam the prime example, to adopt market-oriented economy. As a result, the most powerful members of ASEAN (Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Singapore) are now directly competing with China for export markets and FDI. China and ASEAN’s economic relationships typify their love-hate relationship. While a prosperous China would provide a bigger export market for ASEAN countries in term of natural resources and commodities, its main industries cover the range of goods that encompasses all of ASEAN’s economies. Poor countries like Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia are plagued by quota competitions over textile and consumer goods while Malaysia and Indonesia face the competition from cheap electronic products. China’s cheap and abundant skilled as well as non-skilled labor force give China substantial advantages over ASEAN[9]. In addition, the collapse of the USSR was a blessing in disguise for Vietnam as it was forced to accelerate economic liberalization efforts. Vietnam is now one of the fastest growing economies in the world. As Vietnam is located strategically along the its southern border, China “would never want a strong and independent Vietnam.”[10] While new conditions have arisen, the essence of ASEAN-China relations will remain the same as it was thousands of years ago, and that is the dynamics between a giant kingdom and its inferior neighbors.
Due to China’s importance in maintaining regional stability and uncertainty regarding great power relations, Southeast Asian states have been flexible in their actions. This flexibility explains some of the empirical anomalies plaguing existing security literature. First, realists have been at loss explaining why weaker states appear not to be balancing against China in the traditional sense. Southeast Asian states are neither bandwagoning with the U.S. nor balancing against China militarily through collective security arrangements. ASEAN, instead, is pursuing a strategy of hedging, or betting on multiple alternatives to avoid having to make the hard choice of balancing or bandwagoning. Such hedging consists of three prongs: deepening economic interdependence with China, engaging China in multilateral regional institutions like the ASEAN Regional Forum, and subtly cultivating other powers’ help in constraining China. China’s policy toward ASEAN continues to be a mixture of appeasement and intimidation. While CAFTA is a trade policy designed to achieve the enormous economic potential of the China-Southeast Asia sub-region, it is also a mean for China to supplant Japan as the chief driver of economic growth, allowing it to project more power over Southeast Asia. China, however, continues to clamp down on any attempt to challenge its authority. Recent transgression in the Spratly Archipelago and firm support for the regime in Myanmar serve to remind ASEAN that China still remain much more of a brother than a friend.
Final Words
Historical legacies and new conditions since the end of the Cold War have created many complex issues in East Asian international relations. Among them are Japan’s future role in regionalism and Sino-ASEAN relations. There are several key observations about East Asia’s security structure. First, while China naturally aspires to the position of regional leader, Japan has been reluctant take on that position. Japan has been pragmatic in its approach to regionalism since the end of WWII and its activeness in the region will be affected more by the future of the alliance with the U.S. than China’s rising status. Second, the security structure of East Asia is not necessarily predicated on the traditional concepts security. The world’s second largest power remains happily protected by the world’s largest power. Surrounding ASEAN neighbors are not actively balancing against China. Rather, they are seeking a mixed strategy of toughness and appeasement that would unequivocally recognize China’s role as the regional hegemon but also maintaining tough stance regarding sovereignty and self-determination. Third, increasing economic interdependence in the region, such as favorable China-Japan trade relations and the recent enshrinement of CAFTA, has helped strategic goals converge. Despite seeing each other as threats, each of the three parties also realizes the benefits of cooperating in economic matters and the risk of disrupting trade relations in the region. All sides are interested in maintaining a stable regional order to promote their own economic well-beings.
The lack of genuine trusts between states, however, indicates that the security structure for East Asia would not resemble that of the European Union. States are unlikely to hand over power to a supranational entity. China should be allowed to ascend to regional leader status, for its prosperity and leadership role are important for the stability of the region. The U.S., Japan and ASEAN collectively should be able to provide a powerful counterweight to China. If history is any indication, nationalism, furnished with guns and tanks, will make countries in Southeast Asia tough obstacles to China’s desire to dominate the region. ASEAN also has high hopes in being able to incorporate China into its normative framework, which has proved to be successful in restraining Indonesia in the mid-1960’s and Vietnam in the 1980’s. Japan, with its reluctance to assume a leadership position and to pursue an independent security line, should be content as a secondary status-quo power to China as it currently is to the United States, as long as its security is guaranteed. Japan can leverage its technological and economic advantage over China to increase its regional influence. The U.S., meanwhile, should not take any active military role in the region but should continue to pledge economic support to potential allies. Its biggest goal should be to maintain the alliance with Japan.
In the short run, it is to the best of all parties’ interests to avoid any drastic strategic move. While it has modernized its military rapidly, China still does not pose a substantial threat to Japan or the ability of the U.S. to project power in East Asia. Therefore, China will be interested in maintaining a peaceful regional environment, thereby allowing it to continue modernization without the risk of setting off an arms race in the region. Whether China will be able to maintain this breath-taking pace given its social and political problems, however, is a separate issue. The Japan-U.S. alliance, in the short run, is also beneficial to all parties. For China, it keeps Japan from needing to develop an independent security line that will surely involve development of sophisticated technologies and offensive capabilities. For Japan, in an ideal scenario where the Okinawa base issue could be resolved in its favor, the U.S.’s security cloud will remain unequivocally its most important security instrument. For the U.S., the benefit of having a major East Asian power as an ally is similarly invaluable not just for the ability to project power, but for the sake of having on less independent superpower to contain. Furthermore, the cancellation of a long standing alliance, in itself, could constitute a drastic change that might create instability in the regional environment and signal American weakness in East Asia.
In the long-run, China will be the party wanting to do away with the status-quo. In that event, an all-out containment by the U.S. on China will send regional stability tumbling. Accommodation, meanwhile, will surely bring back the image of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Germany. The U.S. fears the loss of its ability to provide security guarantees, and thereby gaining leverages, should China dominate East Asia strategically. Both countries have actively worked to create alliances and support, especially in non-alignment countries like ASEAN members. While the belief that the U.S. is the least untrustworthy superpower is generally shared among these nations, it is highly unlikely that they will ever publicly gravitate toward one power or another. Rather, ASEAN countries, especially Vietnam and Thailand, will practice what they become adept at, playing superpowers off against one another. Strategically speaking, the U.S. should continue to engage these countries economically and reduce its criticisms regarding democratization or human rights. The U.S. should also implicitly acknowledge the difficulty these countries face in not having the ability to make concrete security commitments because of their geographical proximity to China. Despite the possibility that the U.S. could get exploited because it would be providing benefits in return for no concrete security commitments, the U.S.’s backing will allow ASEAN countries to maintain a tougher posture and ensure that public perception of the U.S. will remain higher than that of China, which has generally been ill-received by the ultra-nationalist population of these countries.
