탈냉전기 일본의 중국정책과 그 전환: 관저외교, 정당정치, 그리고 내셔널리즘

Abstract

Since 1989 many observers have witnessed the very rapid transformation of Japan’s China policy. It includes the collapse of the existing policy orientations such as the policy consensus of engaging China through economic aid, the low profile diplomatic posture on the issues of history, the principle of non-intervention into domestic affairs, and so forth. Many scholarly works have mainly focused on the effect the international system has on the contemporary China policy, that is, an well-calculated strategic response to the rise of China. These views, however, are mistaken. What matters are not international system but domestic politics which have largely shaped the irrational, sometimes very emotional China policy choices. This paper seeks to explain these choices by turning instead both to the domestic politics and the normative context. While analyzing Japan’s China policy from 1989 to 2006 I take up three levels of analysis, those are, intra-governmental relations, inter-party relations and state-society relations. The result tells us three interesting points. First, there was a growing skepticism on the existing, Aid-based economic statecraft among policy makers in the government since the Tiananmen incident, Gulf War, and China’s nuclear test. In addition, both the strengthened diplomatic leadership of Kantei(the office of Prime Minister) and the populistic diplomacy by the Prime Minister Koizumi himself have contributed to the almost total dismantlement of the bottom-up style of policy coordination mechanism inside the government. Second, the bipartisan consensus among political parties on Japan’s economic support to the Chinese modernization program has collapsed too as right wing conservative politicians, especially the new generation politicians across both ruling and opposition parties, gained bigger political supports from their domestic political constituents. They began to strongly argue that the government should use the ODA toward China as an positive policy tool for deterrence, or even for containment. Finally, the most determinant factor among others shaping Japan's strong attitude toward China was the outburst of nationalistic sentiment and its politicalizaion in China policy-making. But, this kind of nationalist games gave birth to strong oppositions from its neighboring countries and, ironically, to Japan's deeper diplomatic dependency on the United States too.