By Kei Koga & Yogesh Joshi
Singh’s recent trip to Japan markedly expanded ties, with the potential to contribute to regional stability.
When India and China confronted each other in the highlands of the Himalayas this April, the reverberations could be heard in Tokyo. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, during his visit to Japan in the last week of May to coincide with 60 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries, relayed the concerns regarding an “assertive” China and the changing power dynamics in the region in no uncertain terms. Indicating India’s growing realism, Singh further asserted that “historical differences persist despite our growing interdependence; prosperity has not fully eliminated disparities with and between nations and there are continuing threats to stability and security in the region”.
Singh could not have been more correct in explaining the relations the two Asian democracies have with their bigger neighbor, China. The 4,200-kilometer Himalayan land border between India and China is Asia’s largest border dispute, over which the two states went to war in 1962. Meanwhile, China’s recent behavior towards Japan’s control of the Senkaku Islands (known as the Diaoyu Islands in China) has been seen as extremely aggressive. Economic interdependence has not helped ease tensions. Despite the enormous trade volumes between Japan and China, standing at about $330 billion in 2012, the aftermath of the 2010 boat collision and China’s aggression over the disputed islands illustrated that interdependence is no cure when it comes to peaceful resolution of territorial conflicts. Worse, Beijing has often used the trade asymmetry with Japan to its own advantage, stopping the supply of commodities such as rare earth metals on which Japan depended.
With its growing military and economic capabilities, the continued rise of China is now politically overshadowing established powers like Japan and rising states like India in equal measure. This disparity of relative power growth has created a perception of a slow but certain shift in the balance of power in Asia towards Chinese hegemony. As these asymmetries grow, smaller states have started hedging against China. In the India-Japan partnership, one can observe similar strategic maneuvers with shades of power politics.
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