Uneasy Friends and Convenient Enemies: Sino-Japanese Competition and Coordination in Cold War Asia, 1950–1972

Abstract

The two decades between the founding of the People’s Republic of China and its diplomatic normalization with Japan presented unique challenges and opportunities to countries throughout the region. On the one hand, Beijing and Tokyo’s commitment to economic collaboration – both with each other and with countries in Southeast Asia – provided dynamism for economic regionalization in postwar Asia, enabling technology transfer, joint ventures, and international trade across borders. On the other hand, Cold War realities also prompted competition for economic leadership between China, Japan, and the United States, each implementing its political agenda and economic blueprint for the region. As a result, this period witnessed complicated patterns in both Sino-Japanese and U.S-Japan relations, featuring both uneasy friendships and ambiguous competition from the 1950s to the 1970s. Uneasy Friends and Convenient Enemies examines these relations and offer a review of factors contributing to the making of them through the lens of economic diplomacy. This dissertation argues that the question of economic regionalization played a crucial role in the Asian policies of China, Japan, and the United States. For Japan, the pursuit of economic regionalization and Japan’s leadership position were constantly on the minds of Japanese leaders in both the business world and the political establishment. Japan’s political establishment joined forces with business elites to conduct diplomatic maneuvers to incorporate China and Southeast Asia into Japan’s agenda to form an economic bloc with Tokyo at its center. Similarly, Beijing’s need to break the embargo and diplomatic isolation prompted China to mobilize its diplomats and traders and seek connections with the rest of Asia through trade with Japan and economic aid to Southeast Asia. As a result, the Sino-Japanese relationship was complicated by a dilemma for Japanese decision-makers regarding their hope for Beijing’s participation in the Japan-led economic regionalization and their concern for China’s challenge to Japan’s potential leadership – both political and economic – in Asia. The two countries’ competitions in Indonesia, Burma, and Cambodia spoke to both sides’ skepticism about the other’s regional agenda, causing constant interruptions to the cooperation between the two countries. Similarly, Sino-Japanese interactions related to Southeast Asia also contributed to Washington’s Asian policies and U.S-Japan relations. This dissertation argues that the United States was unenthusiastic in facilitating multilateral economic cooperation in the region, whether from its ally, Japan, from countries in the region, or its ideological adversaries in Beijing and Moscow. Tokyo, in turn, became frustrated by Washington’s reluctance to support its economic collaboration projects and created bilateral economic assistance projects with regimes that were disapproved of by the Americans. In this way, the relationship between Japan and the United States at that time resembled an uneasy friendship in which frequent disagreements prevented the two countries from forming meaningful cooperation to facilitate economic liberalization in Cold War Asia. This dissertation also explores how economic initiatives – traders, economic organizations, enterprises, and industrialists – contributed to such diplomacy during the Cold War. These organizations acted as governments’ proxies and fulfilled contracts negotiated by economic technocrats; they also took the initiative to survey potential collaboration opportunities, propose blueprints for industrial projects, and participate in intragovernmental trade talks. Entrepreneurs’ involvement in the governments’ geopolitical power play enabled them to influence policy-making processes. In some cases, entrepreneurs even took the initiative to protect their interests and pressured governments to act on their terms. This dissertation shows that when Beijing needed assistance for economic expansion, overseas Chinese merchants bargained and secured preferential terms for trade. Some Chinese merchants even used their relationship with Beijing to help their economic standing and boost their leadership in the local community. In the case of Japan, industrialists not only took the liberty of putting their agenda for economic cooperation forward to the government but also exerted pressure on the government to accept their proposals. Highlighting the various roles that entrepreneurs played in economic diplomacy at that time, this dissertation also suggests a new perspective on Cold War power dynamics. Uneasy Friends and Convenient Enemies contends that it is possible to build an alternate narrative of the Cold War focused on how the division between ideological camps also generated the need to unite the fragmented region and establish meaningful connections that served the interests of both sides. Therefore, it is possible to view the Cold War as an epoch of opportunities to forge unlikely friendships through shared ideals for economic prosperity and regional solidarity.