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Chinese leaders have repeatedly insisted upon the contemporary relevance of the ‘War of Resistance to Japan’ (1937–1945). However, the content of the official history of the war and the lessons drawn from it have changed dramatically from 1949 through 2010. This paper begins by reviewing theories of collective remembrance and then covers four historical periods: China's ‘benevolent amnesia’ on Japan's wartime atrocities before 1982; China's patriotic education campaign from the mid-1980s; the rise of history activism in China in the late 1990s; and the post-2005 reversal in official rhetoric on Japan and the wartime past. It concludes that, while the party-state retains an impressive capacity to shape the narratives of critical periods of modern Chinese history, Chinese leaders are likely to find themselves increasingly constrained by domestic forces and by external events beyond their control. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The defeat of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang) in the Chinese Civil War in 1949 is often explained as a consequence of Nationalist fiscal incompetence during the Second Sino-Japanese War, which led to the collapse of the Nationalist state. In this paper, I argue that from 1937 until 1940, GMD fiscal policy managed to preserve a degree of relative stability even though, by early 1939, the Nationalists had already lost control over ports yielding 80 per cent of Customs revenue which, during the Nanjing decade (1928–1937), had accounted for more than 40 per cent of annual central government revenue. The loss of this revenue forced the Nationalists to introduce wartime fiscal instruments, taxation in kind, and transit taxes, both previously condemned as outdated and inequitable by the Nationalists. Further territorial losses led to the introduction of deficit financing, which in turn became a cause of hyperinflation. The introduction of war-time fiscal instruments led to administrative changes in the revenue-collecting agencies of the Nationalist state, and to the demise of the Maritime Customs Service as the pre-eminent revenue-collecting and anti-smuggling organization. The administrative upheavals of the war facilitated the rise of other central government organizations nominally charged with smuggling suppression, which in fact frequently engaged in trade with the Japanese-occupied areas of China. Hence, administrative reforms at a time of fiscal collapse, far from strengthening the war-time state, created one of the preconditions for the disintegration of the Nationalist state, which facilitated the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) victory in 1949. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article represents the first attempt to examine the Chinese elite's threat perception of Japan using statistics to analyse what, if any, differences exist among the People's Liberation Army, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Chinese economic institutes. It seeks to answer two questions that have not previously been addressed in the literature. First, has there been a change in perception of the Japanese threat in these three sectors over time? And if so, what can we deduce about the causes of this change? This study finds that there have indeed been two major shifts in China's threat perception of Japan since the 1980s, one in the late 1980s and the other in the mid-1990s. It also finds that there were no differences between sectors as to the direction and timing of these shifts. It suggests that Japan's military build-up in the late 1980s and the strengthening of the US-Japan alliance from 1996 onwards are what prompted these shifts in China's threat perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests the hypothesis that the economic relationships between China and her major trading partners have changed over the past 20 years with the industrialisation of China, and the emergence of Japan as a source of investment and network trade in sophisticated manufactures, and the US as a source of finance and investment assets, supplier of services and an apparently inexhaustible demand for consumer and intermediate goods. Has this changed the size and direction of spillovers in the region, and has it curtailed or eliminated American economic leadership? We use time-varying spectral methods to decompose the links between the two leading Asian economies and the US. We find: (a) the links with the US have been weakening, while those based on China have strengthened; (b) that this is not new—it has been happening since the 1980s, but has now been reversed by the surge in trade; (c) that the links with the US have been rather complex, with the US able to shape the cycles elsewhere through her control of monetary conditions, but the China zone able to control the size of their cycles; (d) that Japan remains linked to (and dependent on) the US; and (e) there is no evidence that pegged exchange rates encourage convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an effort to counteract China's maritime expansionism, Japan has endeavoured to be a prominent player in the South China Sea dispute over the past decade. While previous studies have emphasized the limitations of Japan's South China Sea policy, one question still remains: to what extent has Japan's policy been successful? By utilizing Baldwin's analytical framework for foreign policy evaluation--which takes into account factors such as stakes, effectiveness and costs--this article argues that Japan's policy has achieved moderate success. Despite its limitations, Japan's policy has been relatively successful as it helps to maintain America's military presence in the region, and creates normative and diplomatic obstacles for China's activities in the South China Sea without damaging Sino-Japanese relations. Additionally, Japan's policy helps uphold the rules-based order by strengthening the maritime law enforcement capabilities of selected Southeast Asian states. The costs of the policy to Japan are acceptable, particularly given that it has little impact on the waters surrounding the country. Conversely, the policy imposes increased material, normative and time costs on China. Given China's uncompromising historical and security position in the South China Sea, the qualified success of Japan's policy should be acknowledged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article explores on the political system in China under the administration of former President Chiang Kai-shek. Topics discussed include the use of Japanese influence to neutralize the problems in communism, the social and military mobilization systems between the Japanese and the Taiwanese and the military training and intelligence cooperation between Taiwan and China.

What factors have driven South Korea’s and Japan’s strategic approaches toward China? In contrast to scholarly claims that the Sino-Korean and Sino-Japanese relationships have generally been exacerbated since 2010, we argue that the relationships have shown a consistent pattern of resilience and moderate development over the last two decades. An examination of the security and diplomatic relations from 2008 to 2019 shows that bilateral relationships remained at a manageable level, barring episodic stagnations. The findings indicate that converging factors—economic interdependence and the presence of the United States (US)—have consistently motivated Japan and Korea to accommodate China. Major economic entities in South Korea and Japan have prevented their countries from applying irreversible pressure on China. Further, the strong security commitment of the US toward Japan and South Korea has served as a bulwark preventing security dilemmas by reducing fears of Chinese military threat in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses intellectual relations between China and Japan from the 18th-century to the 20th-century in light of purported plagiarism by Chinese scholar Dai Zhen in his 1774 book "Mengzi ziyi shuzheng" ("Analysis of the meaning of terms in the 'Mengzi'") of the 1683 book "Go-Mō jigi" ("Meaning of terms in the 'Analects' and the 'Mengzi'"), by Japanese scholar Itō Jinsai. It is said that Qing dynasty China and Tokugawa dynasty Japan were culturally related, even without diplomacy.

The article discusses the disputes between Northeast Asian countries, particularly South Korea, China and Japan as seen in the changes in descriptions of history in Japanese textbooks, among others. It cites that the publication of the second report of the Japan-Republic of Korea (ROK) Joint History Research Committee showed the animosity between the two parties. It also presents the studies on the historical perceptions in each country, and the rise of Japanese nationalism.

This article argues that Japan matters crucially in the evolving East Asian security order because it is embedded both in the structural transition and the ongoing regional strategies to manage it. The post-Cold War East Asian order transition centres on the disintegration of the post-Second World War Great Power bargain that saw Japan subjecting itself to extraordinary strategic constraint under the US alliance, leaving the conundrum of how to negotiate a new bargain that would keep the peace between Japan and China. To manage the uncertainties of this transition, East Asian states have adopted a three-pronged strategy of: maintaining US military preponderance; socializing China as a responsible regional great power; and cultivating regionalism as the basis for a long-term East Asian security community. Japan provides essential public goods for each of these three elements: it keeps the US anchored in East Asia with its security treaty; it is the one major regional power that can and has helped to constrain the potential excesses of growing Chinese power while at the same time crucially engaging with and helping to socialize China; and its economic and political participation is critical for meaningful regionalism and regional integration. It does not need to be a fully fledged, 'normal' Great Power in order to carry out these roles. As the region tries to mediate the growing security dilemma among the three great powers, Japan's importance to regional security will only grow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan's invasion of China in the summer of 1937 dealt a devastating blow to Chinese journalism. Yet despite the hardships, China's wartime reporters produced a legacy of vivid writing. In the face of a series of major defeats, the journalists attempted to shore up morale and stressed the heroic resistance of Chinese forces. They reported on Japanese atrocities such as the Rape of Nanjing, but not to such an extent that might erode morale. During the Maoist era, the legacy of this war reportage largely faded from a public memory which privileged the revolution. When a "new remembering" of the war emerged in the reform era, the heroic resistance narrative from war reportage dovetailed nicely with the new nationalism of today's China. But this literature has been less helpful in developing the theme of Chinese victimhood, a key component of the new memory of the war. Finally, memoir literature, so common in most combatant nations, has been problematic in China. Those who remember their war experiences do so through the prism of later traumas, particularly the Cultural Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rivalry within interdependence is possible. Trade and investment ties alone are not sufficient to bring peace and security to a relationship, the responsiveness of the political leadership to economic interdependence is critical. Responsiveness can be influenced by a history of conflict in a relationship, national ambitions or by a military which espouses expansionist plans. Britain and Germany before 1914 demonstrated that interdependence and rivalry can coexist and may degenerate into war. This can happen when one side under the influence of a dominant military falsely assumes that the other would be constrained by interdependence from responding to its military action. Both Japan and China have become bound by a tight economic interdependence despite their historical animosities. These animosities could be exacerbated by military modernization and China's plans to develop a naval capability to protect its sealanes. Japan would be prompted to respond to the development of Chinese naval power which would aggravate existing rivalry with Beijing. To reduce the impact of this rivalry both ASEAN and the United States should clearly signal to Beijing that military action over Taiwan or naval expansion without transparency would be unacceptable. Otherwise false assumptions would arise in Beijing that interdependence would constrain responses to China's risk taking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent naval ship visits and exchanges of goodwill between China and Japan suggest an improvement in the two countries' bilateral relationship, which had been steadily deteriorating since the late 1990s. In the longer term, however, Sino-Japanese relations will likely be tested or constrained by five key sets of issues: (1) territorial and resource disputes, (2) nationalism and issues of mutual antipathy, (3) Taiwan's political status, (4) the rapid rise of China's military power, and (5) the U.S.-Japan security alliance. The manner in which these issues are managed or resolved will likely play a major role in shaping the Sino-Japanese relationship and thus the overall geopolitical environment in East Asia. A key complicating factor in the relationship, however, is the persistence of divergent worldviews: Chinese leaders appear to be more consistently persuaded by realist notions of international politics, whereas Japanese leaders tend to favor liberal-institutionalist values. The two countries may use these different lenses to view the same incident or issue, potentially creating misunderstanding and miscalculation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In June 2008, Japanese and Chinese media reported that a break-through had been reached in the four-and-a-half year Chunxiao gas dispute. Rumours that an agreement was imminent had been circulating since early 2008 and had gained momentum during Hu fin tao's historic visit to Japan in May. The breakthrough followed eleven rounds of director-general level discussions, and several ministerial and executive level meetings. The elite commitment to arrive at a consensus emerged after a period of significant tension in the bilateral relationship. Given this turn around in bilateral relations, the process by which the "new consensus" emerged merits investigation as it may hold lessons for Sino-Japanese relations as a whole. In an effort to explain the circumstances of the June agreement and analyse what lessons it holds for the Sino-Japanese relationship, this article is divided into three sections. The first section explores the background of the Chunxiao gas dispute in an effort to understand what is at stake in the dispute and the barriers to compromise. The second section analyses the breakthrough in June. The final section discusses the prospects and barriers to future cooperation. The article concludes with an assessment of what lessons can be learned from the agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dollar dominance in East Asia has depended on its regional support. Japan's supportive policy toward the dollar, however, shifted in the late 1990s as the Japanese government began to address the region's heavy dependence on the dollar, which was regarded as one (but an important one) of the causes of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis (AFC), by promoting the use of the yen in the region and regional monetary initiatives. Despite emerging signs of those challenges, Japan's domestic resistance and the region's power rivalry between Japan and China still makes the dollar the currency of choice in the medium term future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the policies of the Japanese government toward the Ryukyu Islands and the Taiwanese aboriginal territories in the 1870s, during the Meiji period. The author expresses his disagreement with various historians that the Japanese occupation of these areas was intended as aggression toward China. He instead proposes that the Japanese government sought to elevate its national security and role in the international community. He remarks on the influence of these expansionist policies on the Sino-Japanese War beginning in 1894.