Search

Japan?s quest for regional order-building has a mixed historical record. During the first half of the 20th century, the country pursued its vision of a Japan-centered regional order, termed as the Grater East Asia Co-prosper Sphere, excluding the United States, only to bring total catastrophe to the region. Four decades later in the early 1990s, it conceptualized the ?multi-tiered? structure of regional security, with the US-Japan alliance as the linchpin, and rather quietly promoted it with some success. Despite such stark contrasts, the two instances show one commonality?Japan was an ascending power. With this backdrop, the paper examines Japan?s current attitude toward the question of the emerging regional order. Is Japan, now far from being an ascending power thanks to decade-long economic stagnation, and in the face of a new, rapidly ascending power, China, still committed to regional order-building? If so, does Japan still maintain a ?multi-tiered? regional order, in which the position of China is unspecified. Or has the country conceived of a new kind of regional order to reflect the current power balance in Asia? Through addressing these questions, the paper seeks to articulate the factors that shape Japan?s perspective of a regional security order and assess the possible implications for the country?s relations with other regional countries, especially China, overall intra-regional relations, and the ongoing discussion on the recently proposed East Asian Community. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the major power relationship in Northeast Asia has undergone some significant transition and reconfiguration. Among other things, Sino-South Korean relations began to show some new momentum that has the potential to reshape the geopolitical environment in the region. On a series of important political and security issues, Beijing and Seoul share more common interests than their respective relations with the other two major powers in the region: Japan and the United States. On the war history issue, China and South Korea formed a united front against Japan. On the North Korean nuclear issue, the six-party talks have clearly demonstrated that China and South Korea have more in common in terms of approaches and tactics than they do with both the United States and Japan. On the core issue of China’s national interestâ€"Taiwan, Seoul’s position is much closer to Beijing than both the U.S. and Japan. On the issue of Korea’s reunification, China and South Korea are also more likely to find common ground. In additional, both China and South Korea have territorial disputes with Japan. Both China and South Korea have strong anti-Japanese and to less extent anti-American sentiment in the public. By examining the new dynamics and developments in Sino-South Korean relations, this paper tries to argue that with Japan moving closer to the status of a normal power and China’s sustainable rise, a strategic realignment in the region is inevitable in which a potential China-ROK “strategic partnership” is emerging and will be pivotal to a possible regional security framework in Northeast Asia. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]