By Ankit Panda
What role has Japan’s leadership played in conditioning Chinese policy towards Tokyo?
If you missed it earlier this week, I recommend reading Zachary Keck’s analysis of the factors that have driven China in recent years to harden its stance on Japan’s imperial past and its contemporary military policy. Zach’s piece paints a compelling picture of China changing its policy towards Japan due to two primary circumstances: China’s rise in material terms, and more importantly, a shift in the source of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) legitimacy from Maoism and Marxism to Chinese nationalism in recent years. Both these factors do a good job of explaining the Chinese side of the equation, I think, but what about actual changes in Japan that have taken place over the past two decades? Is this change in Chinese policy an endogenous initiative or a reaction to external factors, including the shifting tides in Japanese politics?
While it may seem like Shinzo Abe’s nationalist rhetoric gives plenty of reason for Chinese leaders to criticize Japan, it would seem that China’s skepticism regarding Japanese intentions is only coincidentally justified by the fact that Abe is in power. Abe has been back as Japan’s prime minister since December 2012. Chinese skepticism of Japan has certainly ticked up in that time, but it would probably have done so had Abe not been elected. Prior to 2012, the Democratic Party of Japan was in power. Its three prime ministers, Yukio Hatoyama, Naoto Kan, and Yoshihiko Noda, wanted to recast Japan’s foreign policy towards China and the United States, but ultimately they failed — following Hatoyama, Kan found himself inundated with domestic crisis after crisis as he presided over the prime minister’s office during and following the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.
Read the full story at The Diplomat