Useful rivals : evolving competition between China and Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands from 1970 to the present day

Abstract

The present work is a study of the impact of relative power on the foreign and security policies adopted by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Government of Japan (GOJ) since the 1970s in their competition over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. I track the evolution of the territorial sovereignty dispute from its inception to the present, explaining how and why the PRC has come to challenge Japan’s control over the territory, Japan’s response, as well as elements of continuity and change over time in their respective postures. I place this interaction against the backdrop of shifts in the distribution of regional and global power. I also account for the mediating influence of factors operating at state level, including, amongst others, leaders’ perceptions and identity politics. I depart from the existing literature, which variously interprets growing bilateral tensions around the islands as anomalous in the context of growing economic interdependence; as determined by the past and historical memory; and as the product of short-termism and a lack of wisdom on the part of today’s leaders compared to earlier, allegedly wiser generations. In my thesis I explore a different dimension of the dispute—the way in which it is instrumental, rather than detrimental, to certain foreign policy goals pursued by leaders in Beijing and Tokyo. I investigate the factors that put the islands on the leaders’ radars, turning them from specks of land that were largely ignored by most for over half of the 20th century into the ‘sacred’ territory they are depicted as today. My thesis shows that the islands are a good case study for understanding one dimension of the rise of China in a regional security environment that is still volatile and open-ended, and also to deepen our knowledge about the reaction of Japan and the US to said rise.