The rise of China has fuelled the hopes and kindled the insecurities of many of its neighbours. This project engages with the wider implications of such a rise by examining Japan’s China policy, because Japan’s approach to China is symptomatic of region-wide trends, if not global ones. Understanding it offers a unique window into the complex interplay and links among economic, political, and security dynamics of the Asia-Pacific region. The Japanese government has responded to the structural change of the regional system - centred on China’s re-emergence and US relative decline - with strategies in line with the preferences of sitting premiers and their foreign policy entourage.
Through the adoption and enrichment of Neo-Classical Realism theory, this study marks the evolution of political leadership, or lack thereof, in post-war Japan’s China policy to find that the US and domestic veto players have traditionally constrained Tokyo's diplomatic outlook. 21st-century Japan’s harsher security predicament and domestic transformations have instead empowered the prime minister. Upon Abe Shinzo’s comeback to power in 2012, the prime ministerial executive neutralised domestic and international veto players and towered over the decision-making machine. It did so to overhaul Japan’s security regime and to churn out a Grand Strategy across the diplomatic, information, military and economic domains (DIME) that allowed for strategic balance with China. In the process, Japan would turn into a quiet leader in world politics. From Tokyo’s creation of the "Free and Open Indo-Pacific" strategic narrative to its embrace of economic security, the Japanese government has enlisted the United States and major liberal democracies in its China balancing agenda.
Giulio Pugliese is a Lecturer in Japanese Politics at the University of Oxford and a Part-Time Professor at the European University Institute’s Robert Schuman Centre, where he co-leads its EU-Asia Project. He has written extensively on Japan’s thorny relations with its neighbour, China, and the United States, as well as Europe’s relationship with the Asia-Pacific. Giulio Pugliese is fluent in spoken and written Japanese, having lived in Japan for about five years in total. He holds a PhD from Cambridge University and an MA from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. He co-authored a well-received academic book on Japan-China relations and has published in academic and policy outlets in Europe, the US and East Asia. Beyond that, he writes for Japanese academic and policy outlets on a regular basis.
Axel Berkofsky is Associate Professor at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Pavia. He is also Co-Head of the Asia Work Programme at the Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale (ISPI) in Milan, Executive Committee Board Member at the Stockholm-based European Japan Advanced Research Network and Executive Committee member of the Canon Foundation in Europe. Axel Berkofsky has published books, numerous papers, articles and essays in journals, newspapers and magazines and has lectured and taught at numerous think tanks, research institutes and universities in Europe and Asia.
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