Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific Publishing, 2015. xviii, 466 pp. US$138.00, cloth. ISBN 978-981-4596-41-1.
In the past decade, English-language scholarship on Sino-Japanese relations has increased significantly. Scholars are paying more attention not only because of these two countries’ importance but also the escalating tensions between them. Joseph Yu-shek Cheng’s book is a welcome addition to this very important topic.
Cheng’s book examines the diplomatic history between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Japan from 1949 to 2011. It has nine chapters organized largely chronologically. The first four chapters examine pre-normalization relations, covering the Cultural Revolution, the Cold War context, and the Chinese Communist Party’s use of “united front” policy attempting to woo Japan even prior to the founding of the PRC in 1949. Chapters 5 to 7 study the normalization process and its impact on the future of Sino-Japanese relations. Chapters 8 and 9 examine relations during the 1980s, and chapters 10 to 12 cover Sino-Japanese relations since the 1990s.
I see three main values in Cheng’s book. First is its exhaustiveness. The book is long: 431 pages, excluding bibliography and index. Throughout, Cheng convincingly demonstrates his firm grasp of voluminous details regarding Sino-Japanese relations. My applause comes with a disclaimer: honestly, I did not find much new information in the book, materials that I have not encountered in scholarship or media coverage produced in the Chinese, Japanese, or English languages. Where the book lacks fresh empirical materials, it handsomely compensates with its sheer comprehensiveness. The book is certainly not the first to examine the diplomatic history between the PRC and Japan. But it is clearly among the most thorough works on this topic.
Second, the book examines Sino-Japanese relations from a predominantly Chinese official perspective. This focus helps balance the conventional wisdom on China-Japan relations. Mainstream English scholarship tends to analyze Sino-Japanese relations, especially its recent problems, more by examining what has gone wrong on the Chinese side: for example, how Beijing’s need of promoting nationalism forced its leaders to take a hawkish attitude toward Japan. However, it takes two to tango. Cheng’s work offers a detailed analysis of the mistakes committed by Tokyo, from the point of view of China’s leaders and policy experts. A sense of insecurity is not confined to China. In Japan, this insecurity is fostering an increasingly paranoid government overly sensitive to gains and losses in its interactions with China.
Third, the book offers an insightful summary of the philosophical evolution of China’s diplomatic framework toward Japan: from an orthodox Marxist-Leninist desire to spread revolution to anti-Soviet hegemonism to boosting modernization and to enhancing China’s international status in recent years. This thematic roadmap is helpful as one navigates the long and storied interactions between China and Japan.
I perceive two weaknesses in Cheng’s book. The first one lies in Cheng’s effort to present the Chinese official take on what has gone wrong in Sino-Japanese relations. While I applaud the book’s balancing value, I wonder if Cheng has gone too far in blaming Japan overwhelmingly for the long list of problems between the two countries. Towards the end of the book, as Cheng discusses the latest diplomatic crises, the arrow of complaint is unmistakably pointed at leaders in Japan: how they were held hostage to Japan’s “rightwing” forces (Koizumi Jun’ichiro), how they squandered Chinese good intentions (Kan Naoto), or how unfortunately short their tenures were (Fukuda Yasuo and Hatoyama Yukio). Chinese nationalism is certainly not the only culprit in pushing China-Japan relations to a nadir. But I am surprised at how little systematic attention Cheng gives to this important factor or, for that matter, to China’s domestic politics in general. There has been a lot of insightful knowledge generated on how China’s domestic agenda shapes its foreign policy. Given the comprehensiveness the book boasts, this analytical void is a major disappointment.
Second, as the book progresses, the main target of analysis increasingly shifts from the Chinese government to a particular group: China’s Japan specialists. Indeed, in the last two chapters, references to China’s “Japan experts” appear on almost every page. This is problematic: to begin with, it feels the last third of the book needs a new title: it is no longer China’s Japan policy, but China’s Japan policy in the eyes of China’s Japan specialists. But exactly how have China’s academics shaped Beijing’s policy towards Tokyo? Cheng’s answer is assumed rather than analyzed, as he claims that to study these experts’ words “is probably the only way” to study Chinese leaders’ perception (376). This claim makes the book methodologically one-dimensional and vulnerable to subjectivity.
Also, the community of China’s Japan watchers is pluralistic: one only needs to look at the controversies stirred up by the moderates’ “New Thinking” to get a sense of such lively debates. But Cheng’s analysis of the intra-experts’ differences is cursory. He simply dismisses the New Thinking as “severely criticized”(376). No other information is offered. But what about the rise of such voices in the first place? Did its publication reflect the agenda of the moderates within the leadership? Peter Hays Gries, among others, offered a careful analysis of China’s remarkable public debate on Japan policy. His widely cited piece titled “China’s ‘New Thinking’ on Japan” (The China Quarterly, 2005: 831–850) focused on the “New Thinking.” However, Cheng’s book made no reference to this or similar academic efforts. This is but one example of an even bigger problem: the book treats China as a unitary actor with a coherent Japan policy and a schism-free leadership. I find such treatment, which glides over China’s domestic complexities, simplistic and inaccurate.
Despite these complaints, I appreciate the importance of Cheng’s book and applaud the contribution it makes. Cheng’s encyclopedic knowledge of the vital relations between China and Japan shines in the work. The book is a helpful reference to anyone who wants to understand China’s diplomatic evolution toward Japan.
Jing Sun
The University of Denver, Denver, USA
pp. 413-415