Table Of ContentHEGEMONIC COOPERATION
AND CONFLICT
Postwar Japan’s China Policy
and the United States
Qingxin Ken Wang
Westport, Connecticut
London
Written under the auspices of the
Center of International Studies, Princeton University
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wang, Qingxin K., L 964—
Hegemonic cooperation and conflict ; postwar Japan’s China policy
and the United States / Qingxin Ken Wang,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-275-96314-4 (alk. paper)
1. Japan—Foreign relations—China. 2. China—Foreign relations—
Japan. 3. Japan—Foreign relations—1945-1989. 4. China—Foreign
relations—20th century. 5. Japan—Foreign relations—United
States. 6. United States—Foreign relations—Japan. 7. United
States—Foreign relations—1945-1989. I. Title.
DS849.C6W358 2000
327.52051—dc21 98-044534
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright © 2000 by Qingxin Ken Wang
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-044534
ISBN: 0-275-96314-4
First published in 2000
Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www. praeger. com
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For My Parents
Contents
Preface ix
I. Introduction
1. International Relations Theories and Hegemony 3
2. Japan’s Integration into American Hegemony: An Overview 27
II. Three Sources of American Power
3. The Erosion of American Preponderant Material Power 51
4. American Structural Dominance and Japanese Dependence 57
5. Normative Sources of American Hegemony in Japan 77
III. Evidence of Japan’s Hegemonic Cooperation with the United States
6. The Yoshida Letter and the Origins of Postwar Japan’s China Policy 111
7. The Politics of Japan’s Diplomatic Normalization with China 135
8. The Road to the Peace Treaty with China 179
9. The Resumption of Japan’s Third Yen Loan to China 221
10. Conclusion 257
Appendix 273
Selected Bibliography 275
Index 285
Preface
Historian Paul Kennedy’s best seller, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, has
provoked an intense debate on whether or not American hegemony has declined,
which is yet to be resolved. The debate has continued into the 1990s in somewhat
different forms. It now centers on the shape of the post-Cold War order and the
world role of the United States in the new world order. The questions now have
become like these: whether the end of the Cold War has ushered in a unipolar
world centered around the sole hegemon, the United States, or a multipolar world
reminiscent of classical great power rivalries? whether the end of the Cold War has
marked the “end of the history” and the triumph of liberalism championed by the
United States, or the beginning of “clash of civilizations”?1
The uncertainties about the current status of American hegemony have reflected
the divergent conceptualizations of power and hegemony and their constituent
bases. Whether or not the United States has remained a hegemon depends very
much on what constitute the bases of American hegemonic power and how the
United States translate these power bases into actual influence and control. With
out resolving these conceptual questions, the debates about the status of American
hegemony will not be easily resolved.
Until recently, the study of international power and hegemony has largely been
informed by political realism and its recent variant, neorealism. Increasingly,
neorealism has come under serious challenges by two rival theories of interna
tional relations, neoliberalism and constructivism. These three theories offer three
different answers to the conceptual questions concerning international power and
hegemony. Each theory stresses the importance of one dimension of international
power. Whereas neorealism stresses the material dimension of power, neoliberalism
emphasizes the structural dimension of power and constructivism focuses on the
normative or ideational dimension of power. The advent of neoliberalism and
constructivism has shattered the long-standing consensus about the nature and
basis of international power and hegemony informed by neorealism. Thus, em
pirical testing has become crucial not only for resolving the theoretical debates
among the proponents of the three different theories, but also for resolving the
policy debates.
X Preface
This study is an attempt to provide a preliminary test of the three theories against
postwar Japan’s relations with the United States over China policy. Postwar Japan’s
China policy offers a good case study for the empirical test of these three theories
because the case raises some important questions concerning the studies of hege
mony in general and American power in particular. After its disastrous defeat in
1945, Japan was militarily occupied by the allied powers and subject to a series of
social and political reforms initiated by the occupation authority. These reforms
led to the revolutionary transformation of not only Japanese society and the politi
cal system, but also Japanese international outlook. In the 1951 San Francisco
peace settlement, which ended the military occupation, Japan was formally incor
porated into the Western anti-communist alliance led by the United States. The
San Francisco peace settlement marked the beginning of Japan’s enduring security
cooperation with the United States. The decades of the 1970s and the 1980s wit
nessed dramatic changes in international relations evident in the emerging US-
Soviet nuclear parity, the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, the rapid eco
nomic ascendancy of Japan, and finally the end of the Cold War. Some of these
changes prompted Herman Kahn to predict in 1972 that “the 1970s and 1980s will
see a transition in the role of Japan in world affairs not unlike the change brought
about in European and world affairs in the 1870s by the rise of Prussia.”2 Simi
larly, former US ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer observed in 1975 that
“Japan has grown economically too large and the American economic and strate
gic stance has become too uncertain to permit Japan safe refuge in the lee of Ameri
can policy.” By the early 1990s, there was suggestion of America’s “coming war
with Japan.”3
Nonetheless, despite the dramatic changes in the 1970s and the 1980s Japan
has remained firmly integrated in American hegemony and refrained from the
temptation of pursuing a neutralist policy. Japan’s hegemonic cooperation with
the United States has continued well beyond the end of the Cold War. This is
exemplified by Japan’s contribution of more than thirteen billion dollars to the
anti-Iraqi coalition forces led by the United States in 1991 and the 1996 Clinton-
Hashimoto declaration which further expanded the scope of US-Japanese security
cooperation. Postwar Japan’s China policy has epitomized its prolonged hegemonic
cooperation with the United States, which contrasted sharply with the intense
power rivalry in China between the two Pacific powers in the prewar period.
Shortly after the San Francisco peace settlement, Tokyo concluded a peace
settlement with the exiled government of the Republic of China in Taiwan and
adopted a non-recognition policy toward the newly established People’s Republic
of China. Thus there began the long-lasting cooperation between the United States
and Japan over the China issue. Until 1972, Tokyo had remained diplomatically
estranged from China. The diplomatic normalization in 1972 was not a result of
bold initiative on the Japanese part, but a reaction to the Sino-US rapprochement
initiated by the Nixon administration. After the normalization, Tokyo continued
to maintain its close cooperation with the United States. It would take another six
years before Japan signed a long-delayed peace treaty with China. The peace
treaty was concluded against the backdrop of a policy shift in the Carter
Preface xi
administration to expedite the Sino-American diplomatic normalization in the
summer of 1978. In the wake of the Tiananmen incident in July 1989, Tokyo once
again followed the American lead in the imposition of economic sanctions against
China by suspending its foreign aid to China. The Japanese resumption of foreign
aid to China in July 1990 did not take place until the Bush administration signaled
its willingness to improve Sino-American relations. The consistency of Japanese
deference to the United States over the China question over the last four decades
cannot be more striking. It gives rise to the following questions which are of
central importance to the studies of international power and hegemony in general:
Why has Japan continued to defer to the United States in its China policy? What
is the role of American power in contributing to the Japanese cooperation? What
are the sources of American power, if any? And how has the United States exercised
power to maintain Japan’s cooperation with the United States? These questions
form the focus of this study.
Over the course of writing this book, I have owed a large debt of gratitude to a
number of mentors and colleagues and friends who have provided indispensable
guidance, advice, encouragement, and comments at different places and at differ
ent stages of the project. At its early stage, Claude E. Welch and Jerome Slater
patiently guided the project from its inception in Buffalo and encouraged me to
ask big questions about world politics. They read early versions of the entire manu
script meticulously, and provided critical advice and intellectual inspiration, for
which I am truly grateful. Without their erudition and generosity, this project would
not have been possible. Special thanks also go to Roger Des Forges, Paul Diesing,
Christopher Holomon, Gary Hoskin, and Frank Zagare who have been indispens
able sources of intellectual support and guidance. Seymen Atasoy, Guoli Liu, James
McAlister, Blake Strack, and T. Y. Wang have also offered their generous collegial
support and assistance. At its later stage, the project has benefited tremendously
from a generous offer of a postdoctoral fellowship from the Research Program of
International Security, Center of International Studies, Princeton University. Spe
cial thanks go to Aaron Friedberg, director of the research program, who provided
critical advice, intellectual support, and valuable comments on some portions of
the manuscript, which are indispensable for the completion of the project. Special
thanks also go to Kent Calder, Gerald L. Curtis, Michael Doyle, Robert Gilpin,
Peter J. Katzenstein, Gilbert Rozman, and Richard Ullman who have also been
very generous in offering their valuable guidance and encouragement, as well as
comments on various draft chapters of the manuscript.
Moreover, a note of thanks also goes to a large number of scholars and friends
who provided valuable support and assistance during my field trips to Japan. Among
them, Chen Zhaobin, Hagiwara Seiji, Inoguchi Takashi, Kojima Takao, Morino
Tomozo, Sasaki Takeshi, Sato Hiroaki, Soeya Yoshihide, Tanaka Akihiko, Tomita
Kensuke, Washio Tomoharu, and Zhao Quansheng deserve special mention.
The Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong
Kong, and the Department of Political Science at the National University of
Singapore provided important logistical support during the final stage of this project,
for which I am also very thankful.
