GOOD NEIGHBOUR, BAD NEIGHBOUR: THE EFFECT OF JAPANESE ELITE PERCEPTIONS OF CHINA'S RISE ON JAPAN'S SECURITY POLICY

Abstract

China as a rising power elicits both concerns of security threats and hope for economic opportunities at the same time. By virtue of Japan's geographical and cultural proximity to China, its perceptions of China's rise affect its policy choices. This thesis aims to explore the question of how has Japanese policymakers' discourse portraying China as an economic and military threat changed Japan's security policy? It uses a Self-Other relation framework to understand how Japans policymakers' shape Japan's national identity in relation to China. The methodology employs discourse analysis to examine official government documents, speeches, Diet debates, journals and news editorials. These primary sources are used to understand the temporal change in political discourse on China amongst Japanese policymakers from 1990 to 2014. It then examines Japan's changing identity in the economic, diplomatic and military domains and its effect on security policy changes. The major insights of this thesis is thus to explain how Japanese policymakers' political discourse about China achieves two effects - it sets the parameters for security policy changes, while legitimizing the policy choice taken.