Abstract
East Asia is often seen as a region where international relations is still characterized by severe security competition. The sovereignty dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, administrated by Japan but also claimed by China, has been one of the regional flashpoints involving competition for fishery resources and potential oil reserves. In September 2010, a Chinese trawler collided with a Japan Coast Guard patrol boat in waters near the contested islands, and Beijing allegedly delayed the export of rare earth metals to Japan. Tensions continued to build up, especially after the Japanese government bought the Senkakus from their private landlord in September 2012. This move triggered a series of large-scale anti-Japanese demonstrations in major Chinese cities, a slump in Japanese exports to China and in Chinese tourists to Japan, and frequent appearance of Chinese patrol vessels and aircraft in the surrounding waters and airspace.
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Notes
Discussions in this and the following paragraphs are developed from Chengxin Pan, ‘Shu and the Chinese Quest for Harmony: A Confucian Approach to Mediating across Difference’, in Mediating across Difference: Oceanic and Asian Approaches to Conflict Resolution, eds Morgan Brigg and Roland Bleiker (Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 2011), 221–247.
James Legge, trans., Confucian Analects, The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean (New York: Dover Publications, 1971), 256.
Pan, ‘Shu and the Chinese Quest for Harmony’, 224.
D. C. Lau, trans., Mencius, book 4, part A: 4 (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970), 119.
Pan, ‘Shu and the Chinese Quest for Harmony’, 225.
Compellence refers to a specific type of coercion that threatens to use force to make another actor do (or undo) some action. See Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966).
See, for example, Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995);
and Yuan-kang Wang, Harmony and War: Confucian Culture and Chinese Power Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 186–188.
Qifu Guo, ed. Wuwang guochi: zaichuang huihaung [Never Forget National Humiliation: Recreating the Glory] (Wuhan: Wuhan University Press, 1996), 126.
David C. Kang, East Asia before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010).
Barry Buzan and Richard Little, International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 234.
Shogo Suzuki, Civilization and Empire: China and Japan’s Encounter with European International Society (London: Routledge, 2009), 34–35.
Contra Buzan and Little, International Systems in World History, 234.
Takeshi Hamashita, Choko sisutemu to kindai Ajia [The Tribute System and Modern Asia] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1997); Suzuki, Civilization and Empire, 43–49.
D. R. Howland, Borders of Chinese Civilization: Geography and History at Empire’s End (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 13–15.
Ibid., 14.
Hamashita, Choko sisutemu to kindai Ajia, 8–9.
In 1871, a native tribe in southern Taiwan murdered 54 Ryukyuans following their shipwreck there. The survivors were rescued by local Chinese officials and escorted to the Ryukyuan trading mission in Fuzhou in 1872. From the perspective of international law, it was a misstep indeed for China to admit that the Ryukyuans were Japanese citizens; nevertheless, admitting Japan’s effective governance over Ryukyu did not necessarily imply that China henceforth had lost Ryukyu as a vassal as far as their tributary relations were concerned. Suzuki, Civilization and Empire, 158–159.
Qing Grand Council (Junjichu), ed. Qing guangxuchao zhongri jiaoshe shiliao [Sino-Japanese Diplomatic History during Emperor Quangxu’s Reign], vol. 1 (Taipei: Wenhai, 1963), 21.
Ru-lun Wu, ed. Li Wenzhong gong (Hongzhang) quan ji, yishu hangao [Li Hongzhang Collection, Letters with Translation Bureau], vol. 8 (Taipei: Wenhai, 1980), 3–4.
Chia-bin Liang, ‘Liuqiu wangguo zhongri zhengchi kaoshi [An Inquiry of the Sino-Japanese Dispute over the Extinguishment of the Ryukyu Kingdom]’, in Zhongguo jindai xiandai shilunji [Essays on Modern China], vol. 15, ed. Executive Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Culture Renaissance (Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1986), 115–117.
Ibid.
Li Wenzhong gong (Hongzhang) quanji, yishuhangao, vol. 7, 3–4.
Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ed. Nippon gaiko bunsho [Documents on Japanese Foreign Policy], vol. 12 (Tokyo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1949), 178–179. Ryukyu had been under the strict control of the Satsuma clan since 1609, but it maintained an ambiguous status as a ‘double tributary state’ to both Japan and China.
Ibid.
Yen-wei Wang, Qingji waijiao shiliao [Diplomatic History of the Qing Dynasty], vol. 16 (Taipei: Wenhai, 1963), 21.
Yuanhua Shi, ed., Jindai Zhongguo zhoubian waijiao shilun [Modern China and Its Neighbours: A Diplomatic History] (Shanghai: Shanghai Cishu Chubanshe, 2006), 272.
Liang, ‘Liuqiu wangguo zhongri zhengchi kaoshi’, 143, 145–146.
Qing guangxuchao zhongri jiaoshe shiliao, vol. 2, 15–17.
Ibid., 9–10.
Howland, Borders of Chinese Civilization, 35.
Ibid., 233.
See note 16.
The ‘1992 consensus’ refers to a modus operandi under which Taipei neither openly challenges Beijing’s ‘One China Principle’ (there is only one China and Taiwan is a part of it) nor accepts the latter’s definition of China (PRC).
Chisheng Chang, ‘Tianxia System on a Snail’s Horns’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 12, no. 1 (2011): 38.
David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Thinking through Confucius (New York: State University of New York Press, 1987), 288–289.
This resembles the concept of the ‘Security Dilemma Sensibility’, in Ken Booth and Nicholas J. Wheeler, The Security Dilemma: Fear, Cooperation, and Trust in World Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
Doctrine of the Mean, chapter 14:5, in Legge, Confucius, 396.
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Chen, CC. (2016). East Asia: Understanding the Broken Harmony in Confucian Asia. In: Richmond, O.P., Pogodda, S., Ramović, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Disciplinary and Regional Approaches to Peace. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-40761-0_27
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