Bridging Troubled Waters

China, Japan, and Maritime Order in the East China Sea

James Manicom

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781626160354, 9781626161023
• eBook ISBN: 9781626160361
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Sino-Japanese relations have been repeatedly strained by the territorial dispute over a group of small islands, known as the Senkaku islands in Japan and the Diaoyu islands in China. The rich fishing grounds, key shipping lanes, and perhaps especially, potentially rich oil deposits around the islands exacerbate this dispute in a confluence of resource pressures, growing nationalism, and rising military spending in the region.

Bridging Troubled Waters reminds us that the tensions over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands are only a part of a long history of both conflict and cooperation in maritime relations between Japan and China. James Manicom examines the cooperative history between China and Japan at sea and explains the conditions under which two rivals can manage disputes over issues such as territory, often correlated with war.

China and Japan appear incapable of putting history behind them, are poised on the brink of a strategic rivalry, and seem at risk of falling into an unintentional war over disputed maritime claims. Bridging Troubled Waters challenges this view by offering a case-by-case analysis of how China and Japan have managed maritime tensions since the dispute erupted in 1970. The author advances an approach that offers a trade-off between the most important stakes in the disputed maritime area with a view to establishing a stable maritime order in the East China Sea. The book will be of interest to policymakers, academics, and regional specialists in Asia, security studies, and international conflict and cooperation.

CHAPTER ONE

Cooperation and the Value of Maritime Space

THIS IS A BOOK about the ebb and flow of cooperation between two rivals over disputed maritime space. The analysis compares five attempts at cooperation in the East China Sea in the areas of disputed sovereignty, fisheries management, marine surveys, and hydrocarbon resource development, and it draws lessons for remaining challenges in the Sino-Japanese maritime relationship. The theoretical concern relates to the impact of the value of disputed space on cooperative efforts between rival states. The findings may shed light on some of the most pressing issues in East Asian international relations. Why are disputes over tiny rocks seen to be intractable? Why does cooperation over fisheries endure and cooperation over resource exploitation stagnate? The answers to these questions can inform expectations and policies about ongoing dispute management processes and cooperation over emerging issues in the Sino-Japanese maritime relationship.

This focus on cooperation represents a new approach to the study of China–Japan maritime relations. Recurrent political tensions and several close calls between Chinese and Japanese ships are oft-cited evidence that China and Japan cannot cooperate over disputed maritime space.¹ Although Chinese and Japanese leaders face powerful economic disincentives for conflict, this does explain why the two have actively sought to cooperate over different aspects of disputed maritime space. Maritime tensions between the two are related to the growing importance of the ocean to both states’ development goals.² In addition to the material value of the sea brought by living and nonliving resource exploitation, the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands have taken on a domestic political relevance that is built on nationalist discourses between the two states, which extends to constituencies within government. Moreover, in recent years, the East China Sea has become a strategically vital area for policymakers in Beijing and Tokyo. China’s strategy for the “near seas” is inextricably linked with Beijing’s posture toward Taiwan and the question of national reunification.³ Japan by contrast does not trust that its economic fortunes, which rely on open seas, could be assured if China were the dominant regional navy. In light of this Sino-Japanese rivalry, the fact that the two have managed to avoid overt conflict over their maritime boundary dispute is noteworthy.⁴ As is illustrated below, many analysts interpret this importance as creating incentives for conflict between the two.

In light of these apparent incentives for confrontation, an explanation of Sino-Japanese maritime behavior must be rooted in the salience of disputed space to policymakers. The theoretical framework outlined in this chapter links the importance of disputed space with policymakers’ objectives for that space. Questions of territoriality are of utmost importance to states in an anarchic international system. Contested boundaries also raise issues that do not threaten the integrity of the state, but that may threaten the interests of constituencies within the state, as well as the domestic political prerogatives of leaders themselves. As a result, there is a great degree of variance in the salience of disputed maritime space to policymakers. Furthermore, this salience may not be identical between two states. States may both have an interest in a material aspect of a disputed space, but for reasons of onshore resource wealth, or trade relationships with other states, may have a less acute need. This would surely affect the salience of this material issue to policymakers. Likewise, policymakers who have invested a great deal of their domestic credibility in the resolution of a symbolic political issue are more likely to take risks to ensure that comes to pass than policymakers who have not. Any assessment of the salience of disputed space to state leaders needs to be able to account for these differences. The importance of space, filtered through the domestic and international framing exercises conducted by both parties, informs policymakers’ interpretation of the territorial status quo and in turn affects their reaction to perceived challenges to it.

Debates over the Salience of Maritime Space

According to Jean-Marc Blanchard, states derive both material and ideational functions from disputed territories, which are derived from how they perceive its value. These functions, in turn, inform state objectives toward a given territory.⁵ These need to be identified in order to understand a cooperative interaction in which two states agree to compromise on some aspect of disputed space that affects state goals.⁶ However, the importance of maritime space has not been well integrated into explanations of the Sino-Japanese maritime relationship. Some argue that the East China Sea dispute is driven by material factors, such as resource demand or geopolitical calculations, while others stress ideational factors, such as national identity and domestic political legitimacy. These works have typically not taken the long view and instead have reflected the state of the dispute at the time of writing. Throughout the 1990s, before the discovery of commercially viable hydrocarbons but at the height of nationalist activity, the ideational school was dominant. Subsequently, as China began to exploit resources in the East China Sea, the material dimension became more accepted as a motive. Consequently, little research has been done on the interaction between these two motives because they have not occupied the same temporal space.⁷

According to the ideational perspective, compromise cannot be pursued for fear of alienating nationalist constituencies in their respective societies.⁸ Political elites in Japan and Taiwan have exploited the dispute for domestic political gain during the electoral cycle.⁹ Cooperation is further complicated by deteriorating mutual perceptions of the other. Japanese people have become increasingly wary of their authoritarian neighbor, and Chinese popular perception of Japan has deteriorated as a consequence of a legitimizing exercise by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).¹⁰ Likewise, Japanese politicians earn political currency by visiting national symbols such as the Yasukuni Shrine to demonstrate their support for an assertive, independent Japan. This in turn feeds the Chinese perception that Japan is unrepentant for its past invasions of China.¹¹

Viewed through Robert Putnam’s two-level games thesis, Chien-peng Chung argues that compromises on China’s territorial disputes have occurred when there has been little opposition from domestic constituencies.¹² Consequently, formal negotiations on the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute have not occurred because of the high degree of nationalist attachment, and conflict has been avoided because the islands are not believed to be valuable in a material sense.¹³ Cooperation is thus only expected on material aspects of disputed space, like fisheries.¹⁴ Therefore, “the prominence of political morality in Sino-Japanese relations comes at the cost of a pragmatic attitude toward issues of contention.”¹⁵ This sentiment is politically significant on two levels. First, it could be indicative of genuine popular opposition to the interests of the rival state, which in turn could constrain policymakers’ attempts to control the escalation of political tension or pursue settlement options. Second, these nationalist sentiments are not limited to the general public but are also scattered throughout the policy apparatus in both countries. This creates sections of government that may have suspicious or hostile views of the other state, which in turn affects these bureaucratic arms’ preferred policy outcomes. According to Michael Yahuda, these mutually reinforcing negative images have created a lack of empathy for the other, which in turn has hindered the creation of institutions or constituencies that publicly favor improved relations, as predicted by the liberal internationalist notion of interdependence.¹⁶ Consequently, due to their long-standing inimical historical relationship, Chinese and Japanese leaders appear to confront numerous political barriers to territorial settlement.¹⁷

Likewise, those that emphasize the material salience view it as an incentive for conflict. Policymakers in both countries believe that the ability to use their ocean domain to their advantage is integral to the future prosperity of their state. Japan is one of the world’s largest consumers of fish products, and formerly was the world’s greatest fishing nation. That distinction has recently passed to China, which has emerged as a global fishing power to meet domestic demand that has risen with standards of living. Although bilateral fisheries management between the two has a long pedigree, over-fishing and transboundary fish stocks have created a disincentive for management of fishing in disputed waters. In semi-enclosed seas such as the East and South China seas, as well as the Sea of Japan, this created a raft of overlapping areas of coastal state authority. According to this view, overlapping maritime claims created by UNCLOS are highly volatile due to the growing energy needs of Asian states and a concomitant growth in defense spending.¹⁸ China and Japan are both sufficiently desperate for energy that either party would consider the use of military force to secure access to East China Sea resources.¹⁹ According to Selig Harrison, China’s growing energy needs will force it to drill in the East China Sea, regardless of whether or not Japan agrees to jointly develop the resources buried there.²⁰ Analysts argue that the resource value of the East China Sea as a whole indicates that it could provide for the long-term energy security of either party.²¹ Even those who view energy security as an area of nascent cooperation between the two are pessimistic about the likelihood of cooperation over resource development in the East China Sea.²² This perspective is strengthened by a growing “energy nationalism” across Asia and by the fact that neither Japan nor China displayed an interest in the sovereignty of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands until a bullish energy assessment was released in 1969.²³

A third conception of value is focused on the strategic importance of maritime space. Rising military spending is evidence of state resolve to use military force to secure access to resources.²⁴ China’s impressive economic growth is predicated on secure sea lanes and access to affordable seaborne resource imports, which has seen a departure from China’s historically continentalist orientation.²⁵ Chinese strategists now talk in Mahanian terms about the importance of coastal defenses, sea lines of communication (SLOCs), and blue water naval aspirations.²⁶ Japan, for its part, has always been concerned about the security of its sea lanes, and the protection of these served as the pretext for expanding the operational scope of Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) missions in the 1980s. Japan has historically been willing to free-ride on the global SLOC security provided by the US Navy, but the emergence of China as a naval power presents a challenge to Japanese interests that are geographically well within the operational radius of the MSD...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• List of Acronyms
• Introduction: Disorder at Sea?
• Chapter One: Cooperation and the Value of Maritime Space
• Chapter Two: The Collapse of Cooperation over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands
• Chapter Three: Cooperation on Fisheries, 1997–2000
• Chapter Four: Cooperation on Marine Research Activities, 2000–2001
• Chapter Five: Resource Development in the East China Sea, 2005–2008
• Chapter Six: Managing Two Maritime Powers
• Conclusion: Building Maritime Order in the East China Sea
• Bibliography
• Index