Geopolitical bargaining in the Sino-Japanese relationship

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Chinastudies (BA)

Wu, Hosang (2016)

Geopolitical bargaining in the Sino-Japanese relationship

Bachelor thesis | Chinastudies (BA)

This paper primarily challenges realists’ viewpoints of Chinese actions during the Diaoyu/Senkaku territorial disputes in 2010 and 2012. Through economic interdependence theory, realists regard the Chinese acts as a form of geopolitical bargaining and claim that China is becoming more aggressive and assertive. Liberalists’ perspectives on the other hand, fail to explain why the dispute has escalated. Alternately, realists’ viewpoints overlook a number of factors and overestimate the role of the Chinese government. Two case studies will point out that the Chinese government has unjustly been accused of i) imposing an embargo on rare earth elements to Japan in order to gain a geopolitical leverage in the Diaoyu/Senkaku dispute in 2010 and ii) did not shape popular discontent primarily for the sake of coercing Japan in the bargaining process during the Diaoyu/Senkaku dispute in 2012.

Sino-Japanese relations

economic interdependence

geopolitical bargaining

territorial dispute

Diaoyu/Senkaku dispute