The spectre of conflict and strategic competition has begun to haunt the Indo-Pacific in earnest. In the South China Sea, Southeast Asian nations like Vietnam and Indonesia have nervously watched increasing Chinese incursions into their territorial waters. Further north, the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands have emerged as a significant regional fault line with Chinese vessels making their presence felt, much to the discomfiture of Japan. As the full scale of China’s economic and military power is brought to bear on the region, India and Japan have grown ever closer in an attempt to balance the scales of power. This relationship, while undoubtedly forged in crisis and in the desire to unite against a common competitor, has grown beyond a simple deterrent and now encompasses a confluence of interests across a range of economic, multilateral and security matters.
As has become a truism to assert in strategic circles, China’s meteoric rise to economic and military power has few parallels in history. India and Japan, China’s neighbours and one-time supporters of its meteoric rise, have watched China’s power grow with increasing disquiet. With Japan, the deterioration in relations with China comes from three primary sources: China’s growing security interests, Japan’s alliance with the US and the complicated history wars waged by both powers.
Firstly, China’s rise has greatly expanded its perception of its national security interests and its confidence and ability in securing those interests. China’s limited military interests in the region and its focus on economic growth during the decades of its rise meant that, for the most part, relations with Japan and India remained manageable and cordial. For Japan, relations with China began to deteriorate in the 1990s as Japan’s economy came to a screeching halt while China’s was only just beginning to experience breakneck growth rates; this effectively shifted the economic balance of power in the relationship and reduced China’s erstwhile dependency on Japanese investment. Starting from the 1990s, China’s use of its increasing military and economic clout to intimidate opponents in Taiwan and in the South China Sea elicited a sea change in Japanese thinking about China as policymakers gradually became reluctant realists regarding the threat posed by their Western neighbour.
Matters were not helped by Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi’s reaction to ASEAN and US criticism of these actions during a 2010 ASEAN Summit where he bluntly stated that “China is a big country, and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact”. Throughout the 2010s, Sino-Japanese relations went from bad to worse as both sides clashed over everything from the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands to China’s fortification of islands in the South China Sea. China’s actions, coupled with the political rise of Japan’s hawkish conservatives led by long-time Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, have only aggravated tensions between the East Asian giants.
Secondly, part of Beijing’s threat perception of Japan comes from its alliance with the US. While the US alliance was once seen by Chinese strategic elites as a useful check on possible Japanese militarism, Japan has now transformed from a protege to a partner in US actions. In line with US policy, it has termed Taiwan a “common sphere of interest”, and has actively participated in checking Chinese actions in the South and East China Sea. Further, during Abe’s tenure, Japan made strides towards becoming a ‘normal nation’ as many in Japanese politics urged for an urgent rethink of the island nation’s commitment to pacifism; this is a move that has been met with approval in Washington. For Beijing, a Japan with stronger security capabilities is one that can take on a greater security burden in the region and play a larger role in the now central aim of the US’s grand strategy in Asia: balancing China’s power.
Thirdly, there is the perennial problem of East Asia’s history of wars, which centres around Japan’s atrocities against China in the 20th century. While Japan fired the first shot through attempts by numerous conservative groups to whitewash history, China has allowed the issue to gain staying power. Shaken by the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the CCP embarked on a campaign of patriotic education, which played up China’s victimhood at the hands of Japanese militarism. Veteran Asia watcher Richard McGregor observed that this decision cemented strong anti-Japanese sentiment among the Chinese populace that has made the possibility of a rapprochement difficult for fear of pushback from the public
As possibly the only other continental power capable of balancing China’s growing influence, India has also had to deal with the strategic flux that has come to characterise the current moment in Asian geopolitics. Tensions between these two powers stem from several sources: the rise of both nations in a short span of time, unresolved boundary disputes, China’s bonhomie with Pakistan and the power differential that exists between the two countries. China’s rapid expansion in military capability, seen through its buildup of military assets and infrastructure on its border with India and through Chinese naval projection in the Indian Ocean region on matters ranging from intelligence gathering to counter-piracy operations, has been met with disquiet in India. Matters are not helped by the fact that China has actively worked to thwart India’s foreign policy goals by opposing its bid to join multilateral fora like the UN Security Council, the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Missile Control Technology Regime.
To New Delhi, this has been as clear a sign as any that Beijing does not look upon India’s rise favourably. Further, China’s closeness to Pakistan has meant that it has acted against Indian interests on issues ranging from China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects in the disputed territory in Kashmir to blocking Indian attempts to blacklist terrorists like Masood Azhar. Finally, disputes over the unsettled border and resulting territorial claims have acted as a cloud hanging over the bilateral relationship. Numerous attempts to resolve territorial claims and reduce tensions have foundered, leaving misunderstandings and resentment to fester. After a confrontation in the alpine heights of the Himalayas in April 2020 caused the first casualties on its border with China in more than four decades, Indian strategic elites had to rapidly adjust their threat perception of China and call for a more robust policy of internal and external balancing.
Indian and Japanese concerns regarding China centre around the same key issues: anxiety over territorial sovereignty, fears for the future of free and open navigation on the high seas, China’s desire to challenge the status quo in the region through an expanding maritime and military footprint and the need for economic growth to help close the power differential with China. Add to this a shared belief in democracy, economic liberalism and a rules-based international order, and one has the makings of a strong bilateral partnership.
Shinzo Abe’s return to power in 2012 and Narendra Modi’s election in 2014 spelt the beginning of an Indo-Japanese relationship that actively worked to build a strong deterrent to China in the region. During the 2000s and early 2010s, both sides practised a policy of hedging that has, since 2013, acquired all the characteristics of a balancing strategy against China. This was made especially clear by Abe in a 2012 article entitled “Asia’s Democratic Security Diamond” where he detailed his concerns over the South China Sea becoming ‘Lake Beijing’ and tensions over the Senkaku Islands. In light of this, he reiterated his earlier support for an Indo-Japanese relationship that could ‘shoulder more responsibility as guardians of navigational freedom across the Pacific and Indian Oceans’. [Takenori] Horimoto opines that “dealing with China with its remarkable economic growth and new status as a major military power has become the top priority for both countries.” Today, Horimoto’s assertion that “hedging policies in relation to China” are “a major factor in the Japan–India rapprochement” is one few would dispute.
Excerpted with permission from the chapter ‘The China Factor in India–Japan Relations’ by Harsh V Pant and Shashank Mattoo, in India and Japan: A Natural Partnership in the Indo-Pacific, edited by Harsh V Pant and Madhuchanda Ghosh, Orient Black Swan.
