EAI Fellows Program Working Paper Series No. 9

Author

Elizabeth Wishnick is Assistant Professor of Department of Politcal Science at Government at Montclair State University. Professor  Wishnick is the author of Mending Fences: The Evolution of Moscow’s China Policy from Brezhnev to Yeltsin (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001) and of numerous articles on great power relations and regional development in Northeast Asia, published in Asian Survey, NBR Analysis, SAIS Review, Journal of East Asian Affairs, Issues and Studies, and Perspectives Chinoises, as well as in several edited volumes. Her current research focuses on Regional economic development in Northeast Asia; International relations in Northeast Asia; Russian-Chinese relations; and Post-Soviet foreign policy.

This paper was submitted to "EAI Fellows Program on Peace, Governance, and Development in East Asia" supported by the Henry Luce Foundation based in New York. All papers are available only through the online database.

The April 2007 visit by Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to Japan highlights new opportunities for cooperation between China and Japan to address challenges of globalization, such as pollution and rising demand for energy, yet progress in their relations has been uneven. Their economic ties have flourished despite deep-rooted political tensions, significant security concerns, maritime boundary disputes, conflicting nationalisms and historical narratives. Since the mid-1990s China and Japan have steadily cooperated to reduce air pollution, but energy has proven to be a source of competition and tension, though there have been some recent cooperative impulses.

Until recently China’s approach to globalization largely focused on its economic benefitsand assumed that the Chinese state would be able to manage the process. Increasingly Chinese leaders and scholars are calling attention to the numerous non-traditional security challenges facing their country. The problems of economic globalization and non-traditional security are linked, however, as China’s dramatic growth creates unintended non-traditional security consequences for its neighbors, as well as its own citizens.

Even if its rise is peaceful, China’s development creates unintended environmental consequences such as trans-boundary air pollution and rising demand for energy, which create risk for its neighbors. This article will look at China’s environmental risk management and its impact on Sino-Japanese relations. The article will show a pattern of cooperation in addressing air pollution, but greater competition over energy. Why is there cooperation in the environmental area? Why has competition been more prevalent over energy?

Typically realist theories are employed to explain Sino-Japanese competition over energy and liberal theories are used to account for their environmental cooperation. This piecemeal approach misses the broader context of globalization and focuses on the policy choices of political leaders in both countries, when the issues at play may not be intentional. It is argued here that rising demand for energy and air pollution in China are the unintended consequences of development choices, which create risk with policy implications for China’s neighbors. The paper explains how several factors shape the impact of environmental risk in China’s relations with Japan, including the urgency of the risk involved, the nature of risk management, statesociety relations, and the securitization of risk. Finally, the paper calls attention to the dynamic between risk management in China and Japanese policy responses.

All countries produce risk and this article is not intended to single out China. However, the Chinese case is unique: as a developing country with an extremely dynamic economy butincreasingly uneven distribution of wealth, it presents both environmental risks associated with poverty and prosperity. Because of China’s growing global and regional role and expanding environmental footprint, how the country addresses environmental risk has great significance globally, regionally, and domestically.

This article is a component of a larger research project addressing non-traditional security issues in China’s relations with its neighbors in East Asia. The article also represents a first draft of research in progress and some sections (particularly the role of civil society in risk management and Japanese securitization of environmental risk) are incomplete at this writing...(Continued)