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21. Japan's strategic pivot south: diversifying the dual hedge

Author:
Corey J. Wallace
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
Tensions between Japan and its neighbors pose a significant problem for the viability of Japan's strategic 'dual hedge' between China and the United States. Japan's response has been to embrace renewed US commitment to the region while initiating comprehensive strategic partnerships in military, economic, and political spheres with nations 'south' of its traditional domain of strategic interest. Strengthened relationships with Southeast Asian nations, India, and Australia may turn out to be crucial for Japan as it will enable Japan to manage its security affairs without having to depart from its long-cultivated maritime security policy, and will enable Japan to continue to pursue a neo-mercantilist economic policy while also supporting the socioeconomic development of other regional players essential for future multipolar balance. Japan's diplomatic activities provide a useful 'strategic contrast' with China that will likely ensure Japan is accepted in the region. Japan's strategic pivot is also domestically sustainable and, therefore, deserves scholarly attention.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, India, Asia, and Australia

22. The Economy-Security Nexus in Northeast Asia

Author:
Motoshi Suzuki
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
The Northeast Asian region has attracted at least two types of international relations analyses. A first type focuses primarily on military and hard security and investigates changes in states' power and the politics of coercion, balance of power, and alliances. A second type is interested in cross-border economic activities, regional interdependence, and institutionalization and then examines the states' policies of development, trade, money, and technology, as well as the politics of institutional building and reform. T.J. Pempel's edited volume synthesizes the two approaches by viewing the mutually shaping interactions between economics and security as a major feature of regional politics. The book is a fruit of collaborative efforts by American, Japanese, South Korean, and Chinese scholars who provide in-depth analyses of recent developments in the region.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, and Reform
Political Geography:
Japan, China, America, Asia, South Korea, and London

23. God, guns, and … China? How ideology impacts American attitudes and policy preferences toward China

Author:
Peter Gries, Michael Crowson, and Huajian Cai
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
What impact does ideology have on American attitudes and policy preferences toward China? Based on two large N surveys, we first utilize exploratory factor analysis to uncover six distinct American ideological dimensions and two distinct dimensions of attitudes toward China that distinguish between its government and its people. We then utilize structural equation modeling to explore how attitudes toward the Chinese people (i.e. prejudice) and attitudes toward the Chinese government differentially mediate relationships between ideological beliefs, on the one hand, and Americans' China policy preferences, on the other. Results suggest both direct and indirect effects of ideology on policy preferences, with the latter effects being differentially mediated by prejudice and attitudes toward the Chinese government.
Political Geography:
China and America

24. Strategizing aid: US–China food aid relations to North Korea in the 1990s

Author:
Taekyoon Kim
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
This study sets out to analyze strategic relations of two major donors – the United States and China – in delivering food aid to North Korea in the 1990s. By reviewing the historical evolution of US–China strategic relations in line with food aid and adopting a game model to verify historical findings, it addresses two significant observations. First, the North Korean food aid dynamics were constructed and crystallized by donors' strategic interactions, rather than humanitarian intention to save the famine-stricken North Korea. Both donors first took into account strategic interests in aid dynamics, and then utilized food aid as a strategic instrument for their own purposes. Second, any multilateral cooperation for delivering food aid to North Korea dooms to failure, despite the potential of aid coordination among donor states. Donors' competition for the primacy in the region of Northeast Asia hampered policy coordination for institutionalizing aid networks. It is concluded that the two donors were bound to strategize food aid as a logical outgrowth of their own interests in the wake of North Korea's humanitarian disasters.
Political Geography:
United States, China, North Korea, and Northeast Asia

25. Diplomacy in an asymmetric alliance: reconciling Sino-Australian relations with ANZUS, 1971–2007

Author:
Shannon Tow
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
There is an assumption in international relations literature that junior allies must choose between supporting a dominant global alliance partner and engaging with a rising power. Yet, Australian policy-makers have paradoxically managed to deepen Sino-Australian relations despite their bilateral alliance with the United States. They have developed a discrete China policy on the assumption that they could persuade Washington to accept it over time. They reasoned that this outcome was more likely if Australia used diplomacy to facilitate Sino-American cooperation and to develop an Australian China policy non-prejudicial to ANZUS. This article explores how this 'diplomatic formula' supported expansion of Sino-Australian relations under the Whitlam, Hawke, and Howard Governments. It explains Australia's intra-alliance influence and paradoxical foreign policy behavior and contributes to understanding the dynamics of asymmetric alliances during power transition.
Political Geography:
United States, China, Washington, and Australia

26. The Making of Northeast Asia

Author:
T. J. Pempel
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
Considerable research has been devoted to unraveling the complicated warp and woof of East Asia's onrushing regionalism. This book breaks from studies that take as the key unit of regional analysis either ASEAN (presumably in ' the regional driver's seat'), all of East Asia (the prevailing template of recent interactions), or the Asia-Pacific (the unit that most accounts for the preeminent East Asian influence of the United States). Calder and Ye argue instead that 'the increasingly intense and profound economic and social interactions within Northeast Asia…' (p. 251) are forging Japan, China, and South Korea into a far more significant 'synergistic entity'. In stressing the cooperative dimension of relations among these three powerful countries, the book not only calls for a new focus for regional analysis, but it also challenges the more traditional treatment of Northeast Asia as a hotbed of geopolitical tensions and rivalries.
Political Geography:
Japan, China, East Asia, and South Korea

27. Rising States, Rising Institutions: Challenges for Global Governance

Author:
Isao Miyaoka
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
The global financial crisis of 2008 has strengthened the general impression that the decline of the United States and the rise of new powers such as China and India are simultaneously in progress. A shift in the balance of power must significantly affect the way of global governance. This is a subject of great importance in world politics. In the words of Robert Gilpin, 'the fundamental problem of international relations in the contemporary world is the problem of peaceful adjustment to the consequences of the uneven growth of power among states'. Since around 2010, scholarly attention has been paid to the impact of emerging new powers on global governance. One of the very first books is the volume under this review, Rising States, Rising Institutions: Challenges for Global Governance. This edited volume is the second book that was produced by the collaborative work between the Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) – a Canadian think tank based in Waterloo, Ontario – and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University. (The first book from this partnership is Can the World Be Governed? Possibilities for Effective Multilateralism.)
Topic:
Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
United States, China, and India

28. China's rise and middle power democracies: Canada and Australia compared

Author:
Andrew O'Neil and James Manicom
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
Assessments of how international actors are responding to China's rise typically focus on rival great powers or on China's Asian neighbors. In these cases, relative power, geographic proximity, and regional institutions have conditioned relationships with China. The relationship of China with the developing world has mainly been defined by power asymmetry and the appeal of the Chinese governance model to authoritarian regimes. Largely absent from this discussion is an understanding of how Western middle power democracies are responding to China's rise. This article compares how Canada and Australia – two Western democratic states with prominent middle power foreign policy traditions – are responding to the rise of China. The two case studies are similar in many respects: both are resource-based economies with a track record of bilateral and institutional engagement in the Asia-Pacific, and both are key US allies. These similarities allow differences in the Canadian and Australian responses to China's rise to be isolated in the political, economic, and strategic realms.
Topic:
Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:
China, Canada, and Australia

29. China, The United States, and Global Order

Author:
Shogo Suzuki
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
At a time when American power is seen by many pundits to be in decline, one of the most important and pressing security issues that continue to capture the attention of the policy and scholarly communities is the rise of China and the threat it may pose to the global order. The People's Republic of China (PRC) is the last remaining communist great power, and its different system of governance makes it the 'odd one out' in the post-Cold War international community, with seemingly different values which are often antithetical to the West. This, coupled with its rapidly growing economic, political, and military power, is what makes China a source of anxiety. As China is not a democracy, is it more prone to belligerent behavior? Furthermore, how long is it going to be satisfied with the status quo, where Western liberal democracies have long been in a position to set the 'rules of the game'? Is Beijing going to use its newly found power to challenge Western dominance?
Political Geography:
China and Middle East

30. The politics of compassion: examining a divided China's humanitarian assistance to Haiti

Author:
Czeslaw Tubilewicz
Publication Date:
09-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
This article examines China's and Taiwan's humanitarian assistance to Haiti, as well as the extent to which China and Taiwan – as non- Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors – adhered to the DAC-established humanitarian assistance architecture. It argues that China's and Taiwan's emergency aid was comparable with the DAC donorship in terms of its declaratory commitment to altruism and the pursuit of strategic objectives. Both Beijing and Taipei considered cross-Strait relations and domestic and international public opinion when strategizing emergency aid. The primacy of politics determined a divided China's modalities of aid, funding levels, and institutional framework. The article concludes that strategic considerations – including cross-Strait politics, a suspension of cross-Strait diplomatic rivalry notwithstanding – are at least as significant as altruism in driving China' s and Taiwan's humanitarian assistance.
Political Geography:
China and Taiwan