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The Ever-­Changing
Sino-­Japanese Rivalry

What explains the ebb and flow of the Sino-­Japanese rivalry? Why do the two
states sometimes choose to escalate or de-­escalate the rivalry? Does domestic
politics play a role?
Examining the historic and contemporary relationship between China and
Japan through the lens of the interstate rivalry literature, Streich analyzes two
periods of Sino-­Japanese rivalry and the reasons for their ever-­changing nature.
He looks both at how rivalry theory can help us to understand the relationship
between the two countries and how this relationship can in turn inform rivalry
theory. His results find that domestic politics and expected costs play a large role
in determining when each state decides when to escalate, de-­escalate, or maintain
the status quo.
This book is an essential guide to understanding the historical development
and contemporary status of the Sino-­Japanese rivalry.

Philip Streich is currently serving as Associate Professor at Osaka University,

where he teaches and conducts research on politics and international relations.
He is the author of several articles on international relations and foreign policy
and the co-­author, with David Mislan, of Weird IR (2018). He has been teach-
ing since 2015 in the School of Human Sciences, a multidisciplinary, social
sciences-­focused department located on Osaka’s Suita Campus. Dr. Streich has
also taught at Haverford College, Pomona College, and Rutgers University. He
earned his PhD in political science from Rutgers in 2010.
Politics in Asia series

National Identity and Great-­Power Status in Russia and Japan

Non-­Western Challengers to the Liberal International Order
Tadashi Anno

Distributive Politics in Malaysia

Maintaining Authoritarian Party Dominance
Hidekuni Washida

Japan’s Island Troubles with China and Korea

Prospects and Challenges for Resolution
Victor Teo and Haruko Satoh

Regional environmental politics in Northeast Asia

Conflict and Cooperation
JeongWon Bourdais Park

The International Politics of the Asia-­Pacific

Fourth and Revised Edition
Michael Yahuda

The Korean Paradox

Domestic Political Divide and Foreign Policy in South Korea
Edited by Marco Milani, Antonio Fiori and Matteo Dian

The Ever-­Changing Sino-­Japanese Rivalry

Philip Streich

Risk Management Strategies of Japanese Companies in China

Political Crisis and Multinational Firms
Kristin Vekasi

For the full list of titles in the series, visit: www.routledge.com/­

Politics-­
in-­
Asia/­book-­series/­PIA
The Ever-­Changing
Sino-­Japanese Rivalry

Philip Streich
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 Philip Streich
The right of Philip Streich to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-­in-­Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-­1-­138-­38903-­8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-­0-­429-­42422-­9 (ebk)
Typeset in Galliard
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Contents

Prefacevi
List of figures and tablesix
List of abbreviationsx

1 Rivalry in Sino-­Japanese relations 1

2 Rivalry outbidding and expected costs 19

3 The Sino-­Japanese rivalry in the 19th century 30

4 The Sino-­Japanese rivalry in the early 20th century 53

5 The contemporary Sino-­Japanese rivalry 86

6 Analysis and conclusion 122

Index126
Preface

Why is the rivalry between China and Japan ever-­changing? The rivalry may
remain a rivalry as long as the two states consider each other competitors and
have a territorial dispute between them, but if we look within their state of
rivalry, we can see that there are ebbs and flows between escalatory acts that
build tensions on the one hand and periods of stability and de-­escalation marked
by attempts at cooperation on the other. In the first decade of the 21st century,
China and Japan were negotiating a joint resource exploitation pact for the East
China Sea. Within a few years, however, their Senkaku/­Diaoyu Islands dispute
blew up in their faces. In 2018, they are engaging once again in cooperative talks
and the two leaders, Abe Shinzō and Xi Jinping, appear to be having a budding
“bromance.” This can all change in the next year; it eventually will change again.
This is the nature of their ever-­changing rivalry. Many rivalries are like this, actu-
ally. This book tries to explain why the two rivals choose to escalate, de-­escalate,
or maintain the status quo with a generalizable theoretical argument that can also
be applied to other pairs of rivals.
This book has its origins in the heightened tensions of the Senkaku/­Diaoyu
Island dispute in 2010 and 2012. Having spent the previous two years (2008–
2010) in Tokyo working on historically focused research, I was captivated by this
contemporary conflict in East Asian international relations in this dispute. First, it
was interesting to see how some things don’t change all that much. Countries still
fight over territory. Second and more importantly, however, seeing those strong
emotions and nationalist sentiments in the protests in China and Japan, I was
mystified at how people could get so worked up over a handful of worthless rocks
that none of them would ever visit. This got me started on exploring the ways in
which nationalism, irredentism, and territorial disputes mix together to overcome
rational decision-­making and escalate disputes.
The more I read about public opinion in China and Japan, the more I came to
understand that the nationalists were not as important as they initially seemed.
In China, the government lets the people demonstrate when it wants. The gov-
ernment may even encourage the protestors by providing directions to protest
locations when it wants a good turnout. When the government doesn’t want
protests, it keeps them from happening. In Japan, the protesters are typically just
a small, vocal minority who can pull in more people for big protests only when
 Preface vii
there is a big, controversial event to which the news media devotes coverage. At
all other times, the governments mostly just ignore these people. Essentially, the
leaders use and ignore the loudmouths as they deem convenient.
Realizing this, I was still drawn to the dynamic relationship between China
and Japan. Having conducted research into their 19th century relationship,
I knew the reprisal of this antagonistic relationship in the contemporary era was
something worth exploring. There was a clear link to the past in the Senkaku/­
Diaoyu dispute. Linking the Sino-­Japanese relationship to the rivalry literature
was inspired by one of my old colleagues at Rutgers University, Jon DiCicco.
Could the rivalry literature hold the answers to my driving questions about China
and Japan?
As I dove into the rivalry literature, and simultaneously continued digging
through the East Asian studies literature on Sino-­Japanese relations and Chi-
nese and Japanese foreign policies, I was puzzled to find that there was no link
between these two literatures. In my estimation, the Sino-­Japanese rivalry is one
of the most prominent contemporary rivalries, yet the East Asian studies litera-
ture never cites the rivalry literature. Likewise, the rivalry literature pays very little
attention overall to East Asia. That’s where I spotted the gap that this book tries
to fill.
Returning to my concerns about leaders and public opinion, I was concerned
that I would not find anything theoretical in the rivalry literature that touched
upon the effect of domestic politics on rivalries. Even while dismissing the influ-
ence of the nationalists, I still understood that the fact that they were listened
to sometimes was important. This is when I came upon Michael Colaresi’s 2005
book, Scare Tactics, which is one of the better theory-­focused rivalry books out
there. Colaresi centers on how domestic politics relates to international rivalries,
influencing leaders to escalate a rivalry when there are domestic political oppo-
nents who might outflank the leader otherwise. Colaresi’s book is also worth-
while because it focuses on the conduct of the rivalry, not on the beginning or
the end of the rivalry as most of the literature does.
My work on the rivalry initially started with the Senkaku/­Diaoyu case, but
before long it stretched back to the 1990s. Knowing how important history is in
the region, I felt I could not properly describe the contemporary rivalry if I did
not also cover the first Sino-­Japanese rivalry in the late 19th and early 20th cen-
turies. So the project kept getting bigger until it became this book. I hope you
like it.
Earlier versions of this project were presented at ISA Hong Kong, Ritsumeikan
APU’s Asia Pacific Conference, and at Aoyama Gakuin University. My gratitude
goes out to all who participated in these talks and gave me suggestions. I would
like to especially thank the following people: Jitsuo Tsuchiyama, to whom I am
eternally grateful for hosting my research stint at Aoyama Gakuin University
(2008–2010) and for providing comments on a couple of chapters of this book at
a seminar there; William Thompson, for comments given on chapters at the same
seminar at Aogaku; Kentaro Sakuwa, for setting up the talk at Aogaku and for
your advice; David B. Mislan, my frequent collaborator, for general suggestions
viii Preface
and support; Hide Sakai, my fellow Kansai area scholar who has lent me much
moral support and advice over the years; Yoichiro Sato, for hosting talks at Rit-
sumeikan APU and handing out wise advice; Yoneyuki Sugita, my fellow Osaka
University scholar, for all the conferences and travel support; Jon DiCicco, for
getting me onto the rivalry literature long ago; and, finally, the two anonymous
reviewers for the very apt comments on the proposal for this book. I especially
thank one of those reviewers for the title suggestion, which set me on a course
correction that resulted in the final product. Of course, no one is at fault for any
errors in the book but myself.
A final thank-­you is due to my wife, Nana, and our two children, Joe and
Selina, for having to bear with my late nights and distracted attitude over the last
half-­year.
Philip Streich
Osaka, February 2019
Figures and Tables

Figures
2.1 Rivalry outbidding and public opinion 23
5.1 Military spending, 1995–2017 (in billions of 2016 USD) 99

Tables
2.1 The summary of Colaresi’s model 24
2.2 The revised model 25
3.1 Predictions of the dependent variable, 1874–1895 42
3.2 Performance of the model, 1874–1895 51
4.1 Predictions of the dependent variable, 1896–1926 63
4.2 Performance of the model, 1896–1926 69
4.3 Predictions of the dependent variable, 1927–1937 73
4.4 Performance of the model, 1927–1937 82
5.1 Predictions of the dependent variable, 1997–2009 99
5.2 Performance of the model, 1997–2009 106
5.3 Predictions of the dependent variable, 2010–2018 108
5.4 Performance of the model, 2010–2018 115
Abbreviations

ADIZ Air Defense Identification Zone

APEC Asia-­Pacific Economic Cooperation
ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations
CCP Chinese Communist Party
CNOOC The China National Offshore Oil Corporation
COW Correlates of War
CTBT Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
DPJ Democratic Party of Japan
EEZ Economic Exclusion Zone
GDP Gross Domestic Product
KMT Kuomintang (the Nationalist Party of China)
LDP Liberal Democratic Party
MIDs militarized interstate disputes (from the Correlates of War dataset)
MSDF Japanese Maritime Self-­Defense forces
NDPO National Defense Program Outline
n.m. nautical miles
ODA official development assistance
PLA People’s Liberation Army (China)
PRC People’s Republic of China
SDF Japanese Self-­Defense forces
SOA State Oceanic Administration (China)
TMD theater missile defense
UNCLOS United Nations Convention of the Laws of the Sea
1 Rivalry in Sino-­Japanese
relations

Between September 2010 and late 2013, the dispute between China and Japan
over the Senkaku/­Diaoyu Islands escalated to dangerous heights. The dispute
initially heated up on September 7, 2010, when the Japanese Coast Guard
arrested a Chinese fishing boat captain and his crew in the East China Sea waters
surrounding the islands after he steered his trawler into collisions with two coast
guard vessels. China denounced the detentions and demanded their release.
Though the crew and the trawler were released in the following week, prosecu-
tors announced that the captain’s detention would be extended ten days, leading
to stronger denunciations from Beijing and large anti-­Japanese protests on the
streets. China finally retaliated by arresting four Japanese nationals working in
China and by unofficially blocking the export to Japan of rare earth minerals, the
production of which China monopolizes. Tokyo at this point gave in, repatriating
the captain to Chinese authorities on September 24. Throughout much of 2012,
tensions slowly built up again over the prospect of either the metropolitan city
government or the national government in Tokyo purchasing three of the five
Senkaku/­Diaoyu Islands from their private Japanese owners, who were looking
to dump the resource-­barren rocks. The debate over buying the islands led to
large-­scale anti-­Japanese protests in China and damage to Japanese-­owned busi-
nesses. Beijing denounced any such purchase as provocative, warning it would
have repercussions on Sino-­Japanese relations. The Democratic Party of Japan
(DPJ) cabinet went ahead with the purchase anyway in September 2012, to stop
the right-­wing governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, from doing the same. The
decision was the lesser of two evils for the DPJ, but it infuriated China nonethe-
less (Drifte 2014; Weiss 2014). This led to the most dangerous part of the esca-
lated dispute. In December 2012, Chinese surveillance aircraft began flights over
the islands. Then, on separate occasions in January 2013, Chinese frigates locked
their fire-­control radar onto a Japanese Maritime Self-­Defense forces (MSDF)
helicopter and an MSDF destroyer in the vicinity of the islands. This brought
the two states closer to conflict than probably at any point since 1945. Finally,
in November 2013, China announced the introduction of an Air Defense Iden-
tification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea, covering an area that includes the
Senkaku/­Diaoyu Islands and requiring all foreign aircraft to report their flight
paths to China or risk being shot down.
2 Rivalry in Sino-­Japanese relations
Yet by 2018, the situation between China and Japan had seemingly taken a
180-­degree turn. Though Chinese intrusions into territorial waters around the
Senkaku/­Diaoyu Islands still continued, China and Japan began to hold high-­
level communications and meetings between officials on improving relations,
starting in 2014. These encouraging signs led to the first (albeit awkward) meet-
ing between Japan’s Prime Minister Abe Shinzō and China’s President Xi Jinping
at an Asia-­Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in November 2014
(Takahara 2014). The maritime intrusions around the disputed islands continue,
including even armed Chinese naval vessels and fleets of over 200 fishing vessels,
but warm relations between the two governments have continued to grow. At
the most recent bilateral meeting in October 2018, a summit between Abe and
Xi in Beijing, the two leaders expressed their belief that Sino-­Japanese relations
had made a new start (Qiuyu 2018). The summit also produced concrete results:
China and Japan signed several agreements pertaining to maritime cooperation
and business dealings. Now is this how rivals with a bitter, ongoing territorial
dispute and unresolved historical issues behave?
Here is another example of counterintuitive behavior in Sino-­Japanese rela-
tions. We typically think of Japan’s foreign policy in the first half of the 20th
century as a period of unrequited imperial expansion. Yet during the Chinese
(Xinhai) Revolution of 1911, in which the long-­in-­decline Qing Dynasty finally
fell from power, and in the fragmented state that followed, Japan did not take
advantage of its neighbor in her weakened state. Japan of course administered
two Chinese territories as a result of the First Sino-­Japanese War – Taiwan and
the Liaodong Peninsula (the Kwantung Leased Territory). However, Japan
refrained from further expansion, despite several interventions (Boxer Rebellion,
Shandong, Shanghai, Jiandao), until the 1930s. In the mid 1920s, after return-
ing Shandong to China, Japan even embarked on a policy of nonintervention
in China. The Japanese Imperial Army started expanding out of its toehold in
southern Manchuria after Chiang Kai-­shek and the Kuomintang brought more
of China under his control with the completion of the Northern Expedition.
Why did Japan not take greater advantage of its weakened rival?
These examples show the ever-­changing nature of the Sino-­Japanese rivalry.
Many rivalries do not feature a constant escalation to greater and greater levels
of conflict. They ebb and flow as each rival chooses to escalate, de-­escalate, or
maintain the status quo. The goal of this book is to provide an explanation of why
rival states choose one of these options. The argument is a revised version of a
model of rivalry behavior developed by Michael Colaresi in his 2005 book, Scare
Tactics: The Politics of International Rivalry.
I argue that domestic politics and expected costs largely determine the actions
that rivals choose to take. Rivalry behavior is thus not determined entirely at the
interstate level, as with many theories of conflict, but is two-­level in nature. That
is to say, the relative capabilities between the two rivals and the potential involve-
ment of any third parties (which determine expected costs) interact with the
relationship between each state’s leadership and its domestic political opposition
to influence the action each rival takes. Variables coming from domestic politics
 Rivalry in Sino-­Japanese relations 3
are often overlooked in international relations due to the strong influence of
structural realism (Waltz 1979). The domestic political independent variable is
called rivalry outbidding (Colaresi 2005, 29–34). This describes the situation in
which a domestic political opposition can outflank the leadership by calling for
stronger policies vis-­à-­vis the rival. This ability to outflank the leadership draws
the leader’s policies more toward escalation with the rival, to avoid being replaced
by the opposition. I believe that rivalry outbidding takes priority in the interac-
tion between the two variables. When rivalry outbidding is high – when a domes-
tic political opponent is attempting to outflank the leader on policy toward the
rival – then the model predicts escalation, no matter what the expected costs.
The argument is rationalist. The central decision-­makers are state leaders who
are assumed to prioritize remaining in power (or helping their party to victory if
term-­limited) over all other goals.
The other independent variable is the expected costs of continuing the rivalry.
Judging the costs of decisions is naturally a part of many rationalist arguments.
Here, the expected future costs of the rivalry are simplified as being “high” or
“low.” When the expected costs are high, then there is pressure to de-­escalate the
rivalry. When the expected costs are low, then costs are not a worry and the state
may simply maintain the status quo. In both of these cases, rivalry outbidding
is presumed to be low. Escalation of the rivalry is predicted to occur only when
rivalry outbidding is high, and, in that scenario, I argue that expected costs do
not matter. A 2x2 matrix capturing the two values (high and low) of the two vari-
ables and the resulting predictions is presented in the next chapter.
Using this brief description of the argument, we can return to the two empiri-
cal examples described previously for a brief explanation of the turn of events in
each case (see the relevant chapters for a longer explanation). The potential for
rivalry outbidding started to decline in the mid-­2010s as Xi Jinping began his
Anti-­Corruption Campaign, which he used to remove all of his rivals for power
in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In this way he was able to consolidate
power in Beijing in the run-­up to the 19th Party Congress in 2017. With no
potential opponents in the CCP to outflank him on China’s Japan policy, Xi was
able to calm the tensions with Japan. The trade war with the U.S. in 2018 raised
expected costs for continuing the rivalry with Japan, handing Xi a firm incentive
to sign agreements with Japan and making their detente official. In Tokyo, Abe
Shinzō faces low or no rivalry outbidding because he has placed himself ideologi-
cally on the far right with regard to China relations. There is practically no room
to outflank Abe. So when he sits down to reciprocate China’s conciliatory moves,
it is reminiscent of Nixon going to China.
Likewise, in the first three decades of the 20th century, it could be argued
that Japan refrained from preying further on China (keep in mind they still held
Taiwan and Liaodong Peninsula) because, after the successful prosecution of the
First Sino-­Japanese War and the Russo-­Japanese War, the army generally came to
agree with the policies of the civilian government, at least until the late 1920s.
There were a series of Seiyūkai prime ministers (Seiyūkai being the more con-
servative political party of the prewar era) as well as retired generals and admirals
4 Rivalry in Sino-­Japanese relations
serving as prime ministers, which helped remove the gap between government
and military preferences as well as any rivalry outbidding political opponents.
Expected costs of continuing the rivalry with China were very low, since China
had fragmented into a warlord system, so Japan could just maintain the rivalry
status quo and protect its conquered territories. This overall period of status quo
maintenance only came to an end when the civilian government moved more to
the center and the army’s preferences moved more to the right, leading to their
outbidding (not to mention several coup attempts and assassinations).
This book provides support for the theoretical argument through three empiri-
cal chapters (Chapter 3–5), which together cover the two periods of Sino-­Japanese
rivalry. China and Japan have been engaged in a rivalry since the mid-­1990s, but
they were also engaged in a rivalry from the 1870s until the end of the Pacific
War in 1945. The evidence provided in the empirical chapters finds support for
the theoretical argument. The model’s predictions are accurate in most, but not
all, instances of state reactions to events. The results are shown by tables in the
empirical chapters that summarize the predicted actions based on the independ-
ent variables and the actual actions taken. The results are positive – the model is
found to have a respectable level of support from the empirical evidence. Since
the theoretical argument is generalizable and finds support in the Sino-­Japanese
case, it should be tested with other rivalries in future research. The rest of this
introductory chapter reviews the literature on interstate rivalry.

The literature on interstate rivalries and

the Sino-­Japanese relationship
Before proceeding any further, we should ask ourselves: Are we sure that Japan
and China are actually rivals? Many scholars over the past two decades have
called the Sino-­Japanese relationship a rivalry and several books and articles have
focused specifically on the rivalry relationship (Rose 1998; Rozman 2002; Hsi-
ung 2007; Chan 2013; Inoguchi and Ikenberry 2013; Lai 2014; Takeuchi 2014;
Yahuda 2014). Other authors writing about Chinese or Japanese foreign policy
have devoted discussion to the topic (e.g., Drifte 2003; Sutter 2005; Gill 2007;
Mochizuki 2007; Pyle 2007; Samuels 2007; Shirk 2007; Deng 2008; Ross and
Feng 2008). One of the first works to point to the possibility of a rivalry was
Friedberg (1993–94), who pointed to nationalism, friction over history, and lin-
gering territorial disputes in East Asia as indicators of a relationship that was ripe
for rivalry (Friedberg 1993–94, 17–19). In both private conversations and con-
ference presentations, many of my fellow Asia watchers have been quick to state
their belief that China and Japan are rivals.
So there are strong indications that a rivalry exists or at least that the potential
for one exists. Yet there is virtually no engagement between this literature from
East Asian experts and the broader theoretical and empirical work on rivalries in
international relations (e.g., Wayman 1983, 2000; Vasquez 1996; Bennett 1998;
Thompson 1999, 2001; Diehl and Goertz 2001; Vasquez and Leskiw 2001;
Maoz and Mor 2002; Hewitt 2005; Thies 2005; Colaresi, Rasler, and Thompson
 Rivalry in Sino-­Japanese relations 5
2007; Rasler, Thompson, and Ganguly 2013; Valeriano 2013). That is to say, all
those East Asian experts who frame the Sino-­Japanese relationship as a rivalry do
not actually cite any theoretical definitions of rivalry. This is a large gap between
the East Asian IR/­foreign policy and interstate rivalry scholarship that needs to
be filled. Since many East Asianists believe that a rivalry exists between China and
Japan, it behooves us to confirm that a state of rivalry exists according to the most
common definitions of rivalry from the interstate rivalry literature.
One prominent exception to the lack of engagement between the two lit-
eratures is the excellent book by Steve Chan, Enduring Rivalries in the Asia-­
Pacific (2013). In his book, Chan uses the terminology of the IR rivalry literature
(“enduring rivalries” is a term used by Diehl, Goertz, and their co-­authors) and
cites the rivalry scholars. But Chan is critical of the explanatory value of the rivalry
concept. Using a neoliberal institutionalist theoretical perspective (Axelrod 1984;
Keohane and Nye 1989), Chan argues that East Asian states, including its many
rivalries, will be constrained from escalating their disputes because their leaders
prioritize economic growth and interdependence (Chan 2013, xi–xii). Chan also
covers broadly and in general terms the rivalries in East Asia rather than focus
specifically on the Sino-­Japanese relationship (Chan 2013, xiv). My argument
stays within the confines of the rivalry literature.
It should be noted that rivalry scholars reference different types of rivalry in
the literature. There are enduring, isolated, proto, and strategic rivalries, among
others. My conception of rivalry in the context of the Sino-­Japanese relationship
is closest to what Diehl and Goertz call enduring rivalries and what Thompson
et al. call strategic and positional rivalries. These terms are not mutually exclu-
sive, but they are different due to the concerns of the two main approaches in
rivalry research, as explained in what follows. The Sino-­Japanese relationship fits
these two categories because it is a prolonged rivalry (i.e., it is enduring) over
spatial and positional issues (Diehl and Goertz 2001, 22; Colaresi, Rasler, and
Thompson 2007, 79). To keep things simple, I do not utilize these terms in the
following chapters, since they can obscure and abstract for readers not familiar
with the rivalry literature. I will plainly refer to “rivals” and “rivalry” without any
qualifiers in front.
It is probably not unusual that many authors writing about the Sino-­Japanese
relationship have described China and Japan as rivals without actually linking
their books and articles to the academic literature of interstate rivalries. To those
that use the word “rivalry,” it’s rather obvious. They point to China and Japan’s
competition over the Senkaku/­Diaoyu Islands and fossil fuel resources in the
East China Sea, defense spending, and their respective geopolitical positions. It
seems that whenever one of the two states launches talks with another country
or an intergovernmental organization, the other sees the need to keep up and
does the same. We can see this in the opening of their military bases in the Horn
of Africa country of Djibouti. Japan opened theirs in 2011; China followed with
theirs in 2017. We can also see it in the two states chasing free trade agreements
with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). China opened nego-
tiations first in 2000; Japan followed two years later. One geopolitical issue that
6 Rivalry in Sino-­Japanese relations
looms large is the respective economic power of China and Japan. The Japanese
prided themselves on becoming the world’s second largest economy during the
Cold War years. By the late 1980s, talk even turned toward the possibility that
Japan might one day supplant the United States as the top economic power. But
since the burst of the bubble economy, Japan’s economy has languished with two
decades of stagnant growth marked by frequent recessions and deflation. Mean-
while, China’s phenomenal economic growth in the 1990s and 2000s made it
the world’s second-­ranked economy by 2010. China’s Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) stood at US$1.2 trillion in 2000, compared to Japan’s $4.67 trillion. At
the end of the decade, China’s GDP was $5.9 trillion, while Japan’s stood at
$5.47 trillion (Yahuda 2014, 39). As a result, the two countries have experienced
the economic version of a power transition – China has taken Japan’s place as
the lead goose in the flying geese formation of the postwar East Asian economic
sphere. The Chinese people have taken on the same pride that the Japanese used
to have, while the Japanese people wonder what it will take to get their economy
back on track.
Finally, there are controversies over the two countries’ shared past, particu-
larly Japanese imperialism in China and Chinese (and Korean) calls for Japanese
apologies for its past actions. These issues continue to dog the Sino-­Japanese
relationship. The history issue first started to rise above the surface in the early
1980s over the textbook revisions in Japan (Rose 1998), but it would become
the full-­fledged controversy that it is today a decade later with the Chinese turn
toward an anti-­Japanese nationalism and the publication of Iris Chang’s The Rape
of Nanking (1997), which brought Japanese atrocities committed during the
Second Sino-­Japanese war to a global audience. The controversies have had a
strongly negative effect on each country’s public opinion of the other: Chinese
opinion is inflamed by a state-­sanctioned, anti-­Japanese slant in media and educa-
tion, while Japanese opinion of China has soured due to perceptions of scape-
goating and interference in domestic politics. Public opinion in Japan toward
China, for instance, has tanked in the last two decades, falling from a favorability
rating near 50% in the year 2000 to less than 15% in 2016 (Japan Cabinet Office
2016). Though these aspects of the Sino-­Japanese relationship provide much of
the justification for scholars to typify the relationship as a rivalry, I use the stand-
ard maintained by the rivalry literature, which I describe in what follows.

What is an interstate rivalry?

The scholarship on international rivalries forms an important subset of the litera-
ture on conflict in international relations. Rivals are more dispute and war-­prone
than other pairs of states (or dyads). They are among the greatest threats to
world peace and stability – rivals represent a very small percentage of the world’s
total numbers of dyads, yet they account for a disproportionately large percent-
age of the world’s conflicts. Using what he calls “strategic rivals,” Thompson
states that rivals have been opponents in 77.3% of the wars between 1816 and
2001. In wars in the 20th century alone, rivals account for 41 out of 47 wars
 Rivalry in Sino-­Japanese relations 7
(87.2%); post-­1945, rivals account for 21 of 23 wars (91.3%) (Thompson 2001,
557). Clearly, rivalries represent a greater threat to peace and stability than other
pairs of states. Just like sports rivals, there is a certain something about rivals
that does not exist between other pairs of states. Focusing on these conflict
prone dyads is the main rationale of the rivalry literature: “Rather than assume all
actors are equally likely to engage in conflictual relations, a focus on rivalries per-
mits analysts to focus [on the states] most likely to generate conflict vastly dis-
proportionate to their numbers” (Thompson 2001, 557). One can easily think
of the number of wars and other military-­related incidents that repeatedly take
place between the same pairs of states: India and Pakistan, Israel and its neigh-
bors, the two Koreas, Greece and Turkey, late 19th/­early 20th century France
and Germany, and early modern era England and France, among others. The
repetition of conflict between rivals leads to expectation of more conflict, which
contributes to international instability. The dispute between China and Japan
between 2010 and 2013 over the Senkaku/­Diaoyu Islands likewise threatened
stability in East Asia.
One of the primary concerns of the rivalry scholarship has been to identify
rivalries in order to know the domain of cases. There are two basic approaches:
the dispute density approach and the perceptual approach. The dispute density
approach finds rivalries in datasets by generally looking for dyads that share a
disproportionate amount of conflicts between them, particularly conflicts that
fall within a relatively short time frame. The perceptual approach defines rivals
by looking at states that perceive each other as grave threats to one another.
Research utilizing the dispute density approach has been mostly quantitative,
while work in the perceptual approach has been both quantitative and qualitative
(the perceptual approach is sometimes called the interpretive approach). To fur-
ther distinguish between these two approaches, it is useful to distinguish between
definitions and operationalizations. There are two basic means by which schol-
ars describe any concept: by a theoretical definition and by a research-­minded
operationalization. The theoretical definition (or conceptualization) explains to
us what rivalries are and helps us to identify them as they may be developing by
informing us of what variables the scholars think are necessary for a rivalry to
exist. The operationalization of rivalry, on the other hand, provides a means to
identify rivalries after the fact, typically by picking them out of existing datasets
for quantitative analyses.

The dispute density approach

The operationalizations in the rivalry literature for the most part are determined
by the dispute density approach, in which a threshold is met for a dyad to qualify
as a rivalry if it experiences a certain number of disputes within a certain time
frame. Disputes come from the data on militarized interstate disputes (MIDs)
and from the Correlates of War (COW) dataset (Ghosn, Palmer, and Bremer
2004). Some of the original formulations of the dispute density approach are
Wayman’s (1983) operationalization, which requires at least two disputes every
8 Rivalry in Sino-­Japanese relations
ten years, or Diehl’s operationalization, which requires that a dyad experience at
least three disputes every 15 years (Diehl 1985). This approach reached its peak
with the frequently cited Diehl and Goertz (2001), who define what they call
“enduring rivals” as those dyads that have experienced at least six disputes in a
minimal time period of 20 years (Diehl and Goertz 2001, 44).
Klein, Goertz, and Diehl (2006) have actually updated Diehl and Goertz’s
operationalization of rivalry to remove the minimal time component. They no
longer require at least six disputes within a minimum of 20 years. Now, states
must have three or more disputes on interrelated issues, with the disputes occur-
ring within 11–15 years of each other in order to be counted as rivals. To be
precise, the second dispute must be related to the first and occur within 11 years
of the first. The third dispute must be related and occur within 12 years of the
second dispute. The fourth dispute must occur within 13 years of the third, the
fifth must occur within 14 years of the fourth, and the sixth and all disputes
occurring afterward must occur within 15 years of each other (Klein, Goertz,
and Diehl 2006, 337). This operationalization is a little pedantic, to say the least.
Diehl and Goertz used to contrast longer “enduring rivalries,” shorter “proto-­
rivalries,” and even shorter “sporadic or isolated rivalries” (2001, 22), but Klein,
Goertz, and Diehl remove this categorization in their update by dropping the
minimal 20-­year time period, and they no longer codify “sporadic or isolated
rivalries” as rivalries (2006, 333, 337). Diehl and Goertz (2001, 22, fn. 3) even
stated that “sporadic or isolated rivalries” could hypothetically be as short as
one day! Klein, Goertz, and Diehl thankfully removed this possibility (2006,
333). Though the density component has been removed from the equation by
dropping the required minimal time period, I will still refer to this as the dispute
density approach.

The perceptual (or interpretive) approach

Operationalizations serve as proxies for theoretical definitions for research pur-
poses, but Thompson (1995, 2001) argues that the operationalization of rivalry
by scholars in the dispute density approach has represented the main method of
defining rivalries for much of the quantitative literature. Relying on this opera-
tionalization for one’s definition is problematic because it ignores the deeper
theoretical consideration of what makes states rivals. By identifying rivals ex post
facto by the existence of repeated militarized disputes, it implies theoretically
that repeated militarized disputes come first (before states become rivals) and
therefore are a necessary and sufficient cause of rivalries – if there are repeated
militarized disputes, then there must be a rivalry. Such an approach would simply
equate rivalry with repeated conflict and would make it impossible to define a
rivalry in its early stages, as the first disputes are unfolding or before any dispute
becomes militarized. This leads Thompson to call for both a perceptual approach
to defining rivalries and a qualitative methodology for studying them.
For the perceptual approach (Huth, Gelpi, and Bennett 1992; Vasquez
1993, 1996; Thompson 1995, 2001; Levy and Thompson 2010, 57), states are
 Rivalry in Sino-­Japanese relations 9
considered rivals because of the ways in which the leaders and societies perceive
the other state, as well as how they see themselves relative to the rival. Thomp-
son defines rivals as states whose leaders perceive each other to be their greatest
threat, greatest enemy, or most likely opponent (Thompson 1995, 195–196,
2001, 558). Thompson goes on to state that rivals “must regard each other as (a)
competitors, (b) the source of actual or latent threats that pose some possibility
of becoming militarized, and (c) enemies” (Thompson 2001, 560). Admittedly,
this approach has its drawbacks for operational coding for quantitative analyses –
it can be difficult to codify how a political elite views or defines a rival and then
apply that measure evenly to other leaders’ perceptions of other states. Leaders
after all do not usually describe their rivals as being “rivals” in such frank lan-
guage. But this approach is more useful for delving into the dynamics of rivalry in
single case studies in which we definitely need to establish first that the states see
each other as rivals. It might also be empirically difficult to verify if military com-
petitors perceive the other to be their enemy, never mind their “greatest enemy.”
The term might also be anachronistic today. Relations between all states are more
complex given today’s norms of political discourse, high volumes of international
trade, and shared membership in international institutions. Militarized competi-
tors might therefore stay away from using the term enemy.
Thompson criticizes scholars employing quantitative methods for their over-
emphasis on the operationalization of rivalry, but his critique overlooks the fact
that many quantitative scholars do indeed have definitions of rivalry (among oth-
ers, Bennett 1996; Hensel 1999). There is actually a great degree of consistency
between the many definitions of rivalry across these works. As compiled by Diehl
and Goertz (2001, 26–28), these definitions may emphasize different aspects but
they generally agree on a few major points. Emphasizing the competitive aspect,
Hensel defines rivals in the following way:

At the most basic level, the concept of ‘rivalry’ denotes a longstanding, com-
petitive relationship between two or more actors. More precise conceptual-
izations offered by scholars who have studied rivalry or related concepts such
as ‘enmity’ or ‘protracted conflict’ highlight three central elements in rivalry:
competition between the same set of adversaries, the perception of threat
and hostility by each side, and a temporal dimension reflecting the impact of
past interactions and the expectation of future interactions . . .
(Hensel 1999, 176)

Similarly, Bennett has the following definition:

I define an interstate rivalry as a dyad in which two states disagree over the
resolution of some issue(s) between them for an extended period of time,
leading them to commit substantial resources (military, economic, or diplo-
matic) toward opposing each other, and in which relatively frequent diplo-
matic or military challenges to the disputed status quo are made by one or
both of the states . . . Because of continuing disagreement and the possibility
10 Rivalry in Sino-­Japanese relations
of the use of force, states involved in a rivalry are likely to consider each other
a primary threat to security and policy goals.
(Bennett 1996, 160)

These key works in the rivalry literature all share a focus on militarized competition
and the perception of threat. Rivals must be competitors disputing something that
is scarce. This can include the tangible, such as territory, waterways, or natural
resources, or the intangible, such as status, influence, or ideological or religious
dominance (Diehl and Goertz 2001, 23). The competition must involve military
units. Both sides should perceive the other to be a threat. Naturally, one could
argue that the mere presence of military units implies a threat to use them, but
allies that happen to have a territorial dispute will not likely perceive the presence
of military units as truly threatening. The U.S. and Denmark both have maritime
disputes with Canada, but presumably no one in the U.S. or Denmark would truly
perceive threat from the presence of armed Canadian coast guard cutters.
Thompson and his various co-­authors distinguish between strategic, positional,
and ideological rivalries (Colaresi, Rasler, and Thompson 2007, 79). Unlike the
duration-­based distinction between enduring, proto, and isolated rivalries (Diehl
and Goertz 2001), which is no longer in widespread usage, Thompson et al.’s
categorization helps us to think about why states might theoretically become
rivals with each other, and how their rivalries might come to an end. Strategic
rivals are those that contest territory; positional rivals are those that contest lead-
ership in a region or the whole system; and ideological rivals contest the relative
superiority of belief systems (ideological rivalries are less common). The types of
rivalries are not mutually exclusive; a rivalry could encompass all three (Colaresi,
Rasler, and Thompson 2007, 79). When we arrive at the discussion of territory in
the next section, we can easily see why this distinction is helpful given the preva-
lence of territorial disputes as a cause of war. I will present evidence in the first
sections of Chapters 3 and 5 that the Sino-­Japanese relationship meets the per-
ceptual approach’s definition of rivalry for both periods of rivalry.

The origins of rivalries

How do interstate rivalries begin? There is unfortunately not a lot of coverage
in the literature on this rather important question. The best starting point when
considering repetitive interstate disputes and competition, however, has to be
contested territory. There is strong, established empirical support for the link
between territorial disputes and the outbreak of interstate wars. Research on the
topic of contested territory and war shows that territory is the most commonly
cited factor in the start of interstate wars. Covering 177 wars from 1648 to 1989,
Holsti (1991) finds that territorial issues are cited more than any other reason.
Using Holsti’s data with his own classification of issues, Vasquez argues that ter-
ritorial disputes have played a role in 80–90% of all wars (1993, 130). Hensel’s
analysis shows that out of 79 interstate wars between 1816 and 1992, 43 of them
(54.4%) involved territorial issues (Hensel 2000, 65). If the period is split into
 Rivalry in Sino-­Japanese relations 11
two, to check the difference between the pre-­and post-­1945 international order,
we see a small increase in the number of wars involving territory: Between 1816
and 1945, 29 out of 55 (52.7%) wars involved territorial issues, and in 1946–
1992, 14 out of 24 (58.3%) wars involved territory (Hensel 2000, 65). Vasquez
and Henehan (2001) find that territorial disputes increase the probability of war
and that such disputes have a higher probability of war than other disputes.
The existence of MIDs can facilitate the path to war. Disputes involving ter-
ritory only make up 28.7% of all MIDs between 1816 and 1945 (583 out of
2,034 cases), but MIDs that do involve territory are more likely to escalate to war
than other crises. MIDs between 1816 and 1992 were three times more likely to
escalate to higher levels of conflict if they involved a territorial dispute. Moreo-
ver, targets of militarized actions involving territory were also three times more
likely to respond militarily (Hensel 1996), thus leading to the conclusion that
states are less likely to back down from military confrontations when territory is
involved (Huth 2000, 90). And what of the relationship between contested ter-
ritory, rivalry, and war? Colaresi, Rasler, and Thompson summarize this relation-
ship cogently,

We also know that territorial disagreements tend to recur . . . that contested

territory seems to be associated with dyads that experience more militarized
disputes . . . and that recurring disputes have a marked propensity to escalate
to war . . .
(Colaresi, Rasler, and Thompson 2007, 240–241)

If we can assume that many states having recurring disputes are rivals, then
we have a causal sequence that looks like this: A dispute over territory leads to
repeated conflict, which leads to rivalry.
But the relationship is complicated and involves additional variables. Vasquez
(1996), for instance, finds that rivalries between states of approximately equal
power status that have a territorial dispute are more likely to go to war than those
rivals without a territorial stake between them. Instead, rivals without a territo-
rial stake tend to join ongoing wars through third parties. Similarly, Vasquez and
Leskiw (2001) find that states of equal status that dispute territory have a greater
probability of becoming rivals than would be expected by chance, compared to
other types of disputes. Of course, not all territorial disputants become long-­term
rivals. Using a dataset of territorial disputes from 1950 to 1990, Huth (1996)
finds that only 36 out of 129 territorial disputes evolved into enduring rivals.
Thus, many territorial disputants did not become rivals (though this research
should be redone with the Klein, Goertz, and Diehl dataset, which erases the dis-
tinction between proto and enduring rivals). The relationship between contested
territory and rivalry can also have a reversed causal sequence. Colaresi, Rasler,
and Thompson also argue

that in some cases contested territory leads to the development of rivalries

while in others rivalries lead to the development of territorial claims. In still
12 Rivalry in Sino-­Japanese relations
other situations, rivalries and contested territory emerge simultaneously . . .
we find that a number of territorial disagreements are embedded within
rivalry contexts and that these are the ones that are most likely to escalate
into armed clashes.
(Colaresi, Rasler, and Thompson 207, 241)

Their hypothesis supports that contested territory in a rivalry is more prone to

militarization and war than contested territory outside of a rivalry finds support.
Thus, contested territory “is more deadly when it is paired with strategic rivalry”
(Colaresi, Rasler, and Thompson 2007, 253, 257). They also find support that
in many cases, rivalries and the contestation of territory start at more or less the
same time (Colaresi, Rasler, and Thompson 2007, 253). So, to summarize the
link between contested territory and rivalry, we know that territorial disputes
are quite relevant in the start of some rivalries although, overall, the causality is
not unidirectional. Some rivals might get involved in territorial disputes because
they are already rivals, and, in many other cases, the two phenomena arise at the
same time.
Rivalries and contested territory start at the same time in so many cases because
the birth of new states is also relevant in the initiation of rivalries (Colaresi, Rasler,
and Thompson 2007, 84). New contiguous states are often born contesting ter-
ritory. Perhaps the most violent 20th century rivalry, the India-­Pakistan rivalry,
began in 1947 when both states were born out of the British Empire and imme-
diately had conflicts over how land was distributed between the two. Wayman
also backs up the relevance of state birth in rivalry initiation. In at least a third
of “enduring rivals,” the rivalries start when both states are created; many other
rivalries start when one side of the rivalry is born (Wayman 2000, 230). Diehl and
Goertz show evidence that exogenous shocks, such as new states but also includ-
ing sudden changes in power distribution, world wars, territorial shifts, regime
changes, or civil wars, are virtually necessary for the start of a rivalry (Diehl and
Goertz 2001, 232–234). This supports their “punctuated equilibrium” model of
rivalry behavior, which argues that such exogenous shocks largely determine the
existence, direction, and duration of rivalries (Diehl and Goertz 2001, 10–11,
131–141).
Some scholars argue that it is how states handle emerging disputes between
them that holds the key to rivalry initiation. Looking at disputes between states
that may or may not lead to a rivalry, Hensel (1996, 1999) writes that pairs of
states may become rivals if the outcome of their first dispute is not resolved to
the satisfaction of each state. If dissatisfaction lingers, then hostility will persist.
Dissatisfaction is also a factor for arguments by Maoz and Mor (2002) and
Goertz, Jones, and Diehl (2005). According to Valeriano (2013, 28), “How
disputes are handled early in the life of a rivalry matters the most. If behaviors
are exhibited that exacerbate hostility and mistrust early, the rivalry is then likely
to endure because of mutual dissatisfaction and animosity that build up during
the prerivalry condition.” Valeriano’s own model fits in with this pattern of dis-
satisfaction and aggressive reactions. He calls his model the “steps-­to-­rivalry”
 Rivalry in Sino-­Japanese relations 13
approach, which is borrowed from Vasquez’s (1993, 155–157) steps-­to-­war
theory. In the steps-­to-­rivalry framework, Valeriano argues that when states
react in a realpolitik manner to the aggressiveness of another state, then a rivalry
is more likely to develop. The further the two states carry on with this tit-­for-­
tat behavior, the more likely they are to have a rivalry between them (Valeriano
2013, 35–45).

Rivalry maintenance, escalation, and de-­escalation

The analysis of this book focuses mostly on how the Sino-­Japanese rivalry, once
it starts, experiences escalation, de-­escalation, or maintenance of the status quo
at important junctures. We need to know how these changes occur so we can
learn how rivalries proceed over the course of their existence. Colaresi (2005)
has a notable recent contribution to this topic, which will be presented in the
following chapter.
Obviously, militarized disputes and wars springing along every decade or so
will prolong a rivalry. As stated in the previous section, territorial disputes are
often recurring disputes. Why these disputes come along and why states con-
tinue to react in ways that allow MIDs and wars should be questioned, however.
Several scholars find a relationship between the outcomes of a previous dispute
and states’ actions in subsequent encounters (Leng 1983). Wayman writes that
“winners attribute their victory to effective strategy and hence tend to repeat past
behavior; the losers change their strategy in favor of using higher levels of hostil-
ity . . . to restore their damaged reputation” (Wayman 2000, 233). The process
described by these works is similar to Valeriano’s steps-­to-­rivalry application to
mid-­rivalry dynamics.
The most dominant theoretical work on this topic has been the punctuated
equilibrium model of Diehl and Goertz (2001). Borrowed from the biologi-
cal sciences, the punctuated equilibrium model argues that rivalries start with
some type of great exogenous shock, as described briefly in the previous sec-
tion, and then persist at what the authors call a “basic rivalry level” for an
indefinite amount of time until another shock escalates the rivalry or brings it
to an end (Diehl and Goertz 2001, 143–167). The concept of a basic rivalry
level is also borrowed from Azar (1979), who wrote about a normal relations
range in his protracted social conflict theory. Diehl and Goertz explain that the
“basic rivalry level does not change significantly over the course of the rivalry.
Variation will occur as periods of crisis are followed by periods of detente, but
these are variations around an underlying and unchanging relationship” (Diehl
and Goertz 2001, 164). To elaborate, they state that there is “no secular trend
toward more conflictual or more peaceful relations” around the basic rivalry
level (Diehl and Goertz 2001, 165). So there may be random variations of
escalation and de-­escalation, but the rivalry is otherwise stable until another
great shock brings it to an end.
The main problem with this is the untheorizable nature of these exogenous
shocks, which are the important junctures in their model. Leaving the explanatory
14 Rivalry in Sino-­Japanese relations
business to exogenous shocks ignores the decision-­making and reactions of the
people involved. The random variations around the basic rivalry level are untheo-
rizable by nature of their being random. Finally, borrowing a model of equilib-
rium from the biological sciences to explain social phenomena tells us something
about what the theorists think about human nature and decision-­making. It is
reminiscent of Sheehan’s (1996, 82) discussion of Enlightenment Era thinkers
using equilibria from the natural sciences as a metaphor for balance of power
theory. The focus should be on how the humans involved – leaders and their
domestic opponents and the public – react to the major events in the rivalry.

Domestic factors in the rivalry literature

For the most part, the rivalry literature has not really availed itself of the concept
of domestic or state-­level variables. Thies (2001, 2005) is an exception. In his
work on rivalry and state building in South America, he discusses how lead-
ers in Chile and Argentina used nationalism to maintain their rivalry over the
years, which assisted each side in their state-­building in a manner similar to Tilly’s
(1992) “war makes the state” argument. Thies discusses how

academic and military elites in both states created a form of territorial nation-
alism that took hold to produce the rivalry . . . This type of nationalism was
promulgated by the popular press into a mainstay of public opinion, taught
in the education system, reinforced by military planning, and barely con-
strained by periods of democracy (if at all) . . . the military establishments
were instrumental in maintaining a high level of perceived threat among the
population for nearly a century . . . [which] was used to justify increased
extraction and military expenditures in the two countries.
(Thies 2005, 454)

It is entirely possible that neither state saw the other as particularly threatening,
yet strived to maintain the perception of threat to justify their military expenses
to their domestic publics. Thies’s example shows us that the two-­level game con-
struct is useful here. In two-­level games, an interstate dyad faces off at the higher
international level in some type of interaction, typically a bargaining scenario,
while both leaders face their own domestic bargaining opponent at the lower
domestic level, typically a national legislature or public opinion or both (Put-
nam 1988). In Thies’s (2001, 2005) explanation of the Chilean-­Argentine case,
domestic politics trump international level factors. Rather, both leaders used the
presence of a threat at the international level to win more in their bargaining
game at the domestic level.
Colaresi (2005) is the other well-­known work in the rivalry literature that inte-
grates domestic political variables and a two-­level framework into its theoretical
argument of how rivalries persist. My theoretical argument uses a modified ver-
sion of Colaresi’s model to explain why states choose to escalate, maintain, and
de-­escalate. This is the topic of the next chapter.
 Rivalry in Sino-­Japanese relations 15

The plan of the book

Here is how this book will proceed: In this chapter, I have introduced the topic
and its importance, the theoretical argument, and the relevant literature on rival-
ries. In the next chapter, I present the argument in greater detail to explain how
domestic politics and expectations of costs interact to produce rivalry behavior
(escalation, de-­escalation, or maintenance).
Then, in Chapters 3, 4, and 5, I present empirical evidence in support of the
argument. Chapters 3 and 4 split up the first period of Sino-­Japanese rivalry.
Chapter 3 picks up Sino-­Japanese relations (and Korean) after the Meiji Resto-
ration and finishes with the First Sino-­Japanese War. The actual rivalry starts in
1874, but I start this chapter earlier than that to show how the rivalry started and
that a rivalry did not exist before. Chapter 4 finishes the first period of rivalry by
covering the period 1896–1937, though the discussion mostly picks up around
1900. The actual rivalry end date is 1945, but I end the discussion at the start of
the Second Sino-­Japanese in 1937.
Chapter 5 then looks into the contemporary rivalry. Though the actual rivalry
starts in 1996, this chapter starts in 1989 to provide context for the origin of
the rivalry, similarly to Chapter 3. I continue this chapter up to the end of 2018
(the writing of this book was completed in January 2019). Finally, I conclude the
book with a brief chapter that analyzes and summarizes the findings.

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2 Rivalry outbidding and
expected costs

Reviewing the literature of interstate rivalries, one criticism is that much of the
theoretical development has made it difficult for readers to distinguish rivalry the-
ories from realism. Comparisons are inevitable since both literatures focus almost
solely on the security sphere and most of the rivalry literature focuses on security
issues at the international or dyadic level of analysis, a key characteristic of realist
theories. Moreover, some works have tested realpolitik-­inspired hypotheses, like
Valeriano’s (2013) steps-­to-­war (or steps-­to-­rivalry) argument on how rivalries
begin. However, as Wayman (2000, 225) reminds us, many rivalry scholars have
been associated with the Correlates of War (COW) project, and the COW project
has been at the center of a data-­driven approach to find evidence against realist
theories. So no one should accuse rivalry scholars of being realists.
To better distinguish the rivalry literature from realist scholarship, the rivalry
literature should utilize factors at the state level, from which realist theories
largely steer away.1 The “two-­level pressure” argument developed by Colaresi
in his 2005 book, Scare Tactics, presents the perfect foundation for such a direc-
tion. Colaresi’s model “explain(s) the violent ebbs and flows on international
conflict” between rivals (Colaresi 2005, xvii). The model incorporates decision-­
makers’ cost-­benefit calculations regarding the rival (the international factor) and
outbidding by domestic political opponents on anti-­rival foreign policies (the
state level). The model specifically explains changes in policy toward the rival –
­escalation, de-­escalation, and maintenance of the status quo – as decision-­makers’
perceptions of the rival’s capabilities and the international environment change or
as domestic political opponents mount their own campaigns to outflank leaders
in their positions regarding the rival.
As stated in the introductory chapter, the theoretical argument developed here
is rationalist. The central decision-­makers in this model are rational state leaders.
In rationalist theories, actors are assumed to have a set of goals that they rank in
order of preference, and they focus their decisions on the means for maximizing
the chances of achieving these goals. I assume that leaders prioritize remaining in
power over all other goals (or helping their party stay in power if they face term
limits). Moreover, as is obvious from the inclusion of a domestic opposition in
the argument, the state is not assumed to be a unitary actor, as in realist theo-
ries, but is rather an organization of bureaucrats, military/­police personnel, and
20 Rivalry outbidding and expected costs
elected or unelected politicians, including the leader (dictator, prime minister,
or president). All of these actors will have their own goals, which may clash with
each other.
The implication of this is that leaders are concerned that rivalry outbidders,
opposition politicians, military officers, high-­ranking bureaucrats, or well-­known
citizens will try to replace them or place in power someone who will be more
amenable to their goals. In my estimation, Colaresi does not fully give domestic
political outbidding the role it deserves. He limits the power of the rivalry out-
bidders to propel the leader to escalate the rivalry. Since I assume that leaders
prioritize remaining in office, I argue that leaders will be more concerned with
rivalry outbidders than expected costs and will escalate the rivalry whenever there
is high rivalry outbidding, no matter the expected costs of the rivalry.
The plan of the remainder of this chapter is as follows: First, this chapter
explores Colaresi’s two-­level pressure argument, including the expected costs
and its rivalry outbidding variables. I then present the modified version of the
model. In the final section, I discuss the operationalization of the variables and
the research methodology.

Two-­level pressure theory

What is a two-­level model? The two-­level model incorporates factors from both
the international level and the state level, typically to describe interstate bargain-
ing processes (Putnam 1988) or interstate conflict processes in which ­domestic
factors are thought to be particularly relevant. For instance, Putnam argued
that when domestic political opponents of the leadership strongly oppose an
­interstate agreement (for instance, the majority of the legislature), they could
­counterintuitively cause their state to receive a greater proportion from any
bargain than their international bargaining opponent. This is because those
­
domestic actors will oppose and may veto any international agreement that does
not result in their country gaining a disproportionately large amount of benefits.
Otherwise, they would rather not have an agreement at all. The leader can use
this threat of no agreement to wrangle a disproportionately large share of the
bargain from the other state leader, who might see a smaller share as better
than nothing. On the other hand, a legislature and opposing party that favor an
international agreement are more likely to result in the state giving away more
concessions than it gains, with the international agreement disproportionate in
the other state’s favor (all other things remaining equal). This occurs because
the other state leader can see that the domestic opponents are amenable to any
agreement and thus will take advantage. In both cases, the other state’s leader
can see the domestic political opposition or support in the other country and
understand if it can push or if it needs to concede in order to reach an agreement.
In this way, domestic and international factors interact to influence a result at the
international level.
Wanting to incorporate domestic political opponents into his model,
­Colaresi (2005) presents a two-­level pressure theory of how rivalries escalate
 Rivalry outbidding and expected costs 21
and de-­escalate. The theory is not an explanation of how rivalries begin – it starts
with the assumption of a rivalry already in place (I keep this assumption). It
also assumes that the central actors are state leaders, who rationally want to stay
in power (Colaresi 2005, 16–17). Colaresi blends two independent variables,
Expected Future Costs of the Rivalry and Rivalry Outbidding, into a 2x2 matrix,
which is then used to predict which action should occur. The international level
variable, Expected Future Costs of the Rivalry, and the state level variable, Rivalry
Outbidding, have two possible values (high or low). The dependent variable has
three possible values, escalation, de-­escalation, and maintenance of the rivalry.

Expected future costs of the rivalry

The international factor influencing actions vis-­à-­vis the rival is what Colaresi calls
the expectations of future costs of the rivalry relative to benefits, a cost-­benefit
calculation that the state leaders make with regard to the rivalry (2005, 23). Costs
can be calculated from the relative military capabilities of the rivals. As one state’s
military becomes more powerful through increased spending, arms building, and
alliance building, its expected costs for maintaining the rivalry will decrease and
its rival’s expected costs will rise, all other factors remaining constant. Colaresi
simplifies the measurement of this variable by simply labeling costs as high or low.
The odds of winning any potential conflict will rise for an increasingly pow-
erful state, but that rising state also increases its costs due to the very shifts in
resources and military capabilities that make it more powerful. For instance, if
China is directing more resources to its naval assets to escalate the dispute over
the Senkaku/­Diaoyu Islands (more naval and coast guard ships, more fuel for
these ships, and more fuel that it gives to civilian fishing vessels when directing
them to Japanese waters), then it is increasing its own costs. Likewise, Japan will
incur higher expected costs by having to match Chinese actions with greater
military patrols, more fuel, and greater surveillance person-­hours. China and
Japan might be matching increased costs, or China is likely spending more, but
their opportunity costs are different. China, with its stronger economy and large
reserves of cash, can afford to throw money into this dispute. Japan can afford
to do so less since its economy is moribund and it has the highest debt-­to-­GDP
ratio of any developed state. It is important to keep opportunity costs in mind.
Resources devoted to the rivalry could be better used elsewhere. They might be
used for countering and monitoring other external threats and security issues or
to help facilitate domestic economic growth. States with external threats typi-
cally have lower levels of development, investment, and lower standards of living
(Colaresi 2005, 24).
The engagement of one state in a conflict with a third-­party state can also
have an effect on expected costs of the rivalry. When one state is engaged in a
war with a third party (not its rival), then this ties up military resources, govern-
ment spending, and the attention of the leadership. It will cost more of all of
these resources to maintain the rivalry, leading to higher expected costs. All other
things remaining constant, the rival benefits by having lower expected costs. Any
22 Rivalry outbidding and expected costs
type of conflict that reduces military capabilities, including readiness and latent
economic resources, raises expected costs for one state (and lowers them for the
rival).
Finally, a credible threat of international intervention in the rivalry can also
raise expected costs. Measuring this is more difficult however, since the threat
must be perceived as credible by the potential target of intervention. Interna-
tional intervention is not so common, especially going back further into history,
unless the potential intervener perceives a direct threat to its territory or interests.

Domestic rivalry outbidding

As stated in the introduction to this chapter, adding domestic variables to theo-
ries of rivalry is a priority in order to distinguish rivalry theories from realism.
Domestic variables are highly relevant to the study of rivalries. Early scholars
of rivalry understood that there was just something different about rivals that
drew their interest. The frequent disputes, which often become militarized, cre-
ate what Vasquez calls “psychological hostility” and a “negative affect calculus”
in decision-­making (Vasquez 1993, 76–77). Both sides come to expect further
hostility from the other, which leads to mistrust, misperceptions, and rigid cogni-
tive biases (Colaresi, Rasler, and Thompson 2007, 27–28). These emotive factors
exist within the public, often manifested as nationalism. Rational leaders can take
advantage of these emotive, nationalist factors for political gain by scapegoating
the rival. A number of works by Japan and China experts focus on the importance
of public opinion and/­or nationalism in Chinese and Japanese foreign policies
(Shih 1995; Deans 2000; Rose 2000; Rozman 2002; Zhao 2004; He 2007;
Midford 2011; Reilly 2012; Takeuchi 2014; Weiss 2014; Suzuki 2015; Gries
et al. 2016; Tanaka 2016; Machida 2017). In many of these works, nationalist
discourse is often shaped by anger and blame directed at either Japan or China.
State-­level elements of rivalries are captured in Colaresi’s argument by the
rivalry outbidding variable. In any polity, even authoritarian regimes, there will
likely be domestic opponents who try to outflank the leadership in foreign poli-
cies regarding the rival in order to score political points and win the favor of the
voters (or the regime’s supporters in an autocracy). This part of the two-­level
model was influenced by Snyder’s (1991) account of nationalism and expansion-­
pushing logrolling coalitions. Snyder, who used Imperial Japan in the interwar
period as one of his case studies, argued that logrolling coalitions formed from
different interest groups (i.e., industrial groups, the military, agricultural inter-
ests, or the landed elite) would join together to push “security through expan-
sion” myths as foreign policy. These logrolling coalitions inflated threats and then
outflanked the government to frame themselves as the only people to defend the
nation and take on the threats (Snyder 1991). Following Snyder’s argument,
Colaresi argues that elites “have an incentive to inflate external threats for their
own purposes” (Colaresi 2005, 29). Political competitors will engage in rivalry
outbidding and threat inflation when they have an opportunity to make political
gains.
 Rivalry outbidding and expected costs 23
The success of outbidding depends on the respective position of public opin-
ion, the leadership, and the possible outbidders on a continuum between coop-
eration and conflict with the rival. Figure 2.1 captures this idea (adapted from
Figure 2.4 in Colaresi 2005, 31). If public opinion is closer to wanting conflict
with the rival than the leadership, then the outbidders have their opportunity and
the leadership needs to move to the same position and act and speak aggressively
against the rival in order not to be outbid. The leadership can fear being tossed
out of office after all if it is seen as being too soft on the rival (Colaresi 2005, 17).
This represents high outbidding in Colaresi’s model. If, on the other hand, pub-
lic opinion is closer to favoring cooperation, then the leader can pursue whatever
policy it wants without being outbid by the domestic opponents. In this case,
we can say that outbidding is low and de-­escalation or maintenance is possible
(Colaresi 2005, 30).2 A case in which there are no effective domestic political
opponents also counts as low rivalry outbidding.
When the rivalry escalates, the public will probably move closer to the conflict
end of the spectrum due to in-­group/­out-­group processes. In such a case, rivalry
outbidding is high and the leadership has to react strongly to the rival by recipro-
cating escalation. Colaresi states,

Rivals play an important role in either further exacerbating rivalry outbid-

ding or propping up the arguments of relative doves. If the rival acts in a way
that is consistent with the prognostications of hard-­liners, peace initiatives
will be stillborn.
(Colaresi 2005, 30)

In general, the feedback mechanism of escalation is such that it can sink the
rivalry into a spiral that is more difficult to de-­escalate from, depending on how
the other state reacts. Feedback “constrains opportunities for de-­escalation . . .
Likewise, an attempt to cooperate with a rival will echo into the future” (Colaresi
2005, 21–22). Leaders will need to “show some tangible reduction in threat to
weaken hard-­liners” (Colaresi 2005, 22) or enough time will have to pass for the
public’s anger and perception of threat from the rival to subside.
Colaresi (2005, 16) also notes the possibility of diversionary tactics. Diver-
sionary tactics are an attempt by a leader to deflect the public’s attention from
domestic political problems, such as low favorability ratings, scandals, or bad
economic performance, by escalating or entering into a militarized dispute with

public outbidder leadership

Conlict Cooperation

Figure 2.1 Rivalry outbidding and public opinion

24 Rivalry outbidding and expected costs
another country. The leader in this case tries to lead public opinion toward the
conflict end of the spectrum rather than the public leading the leadership. Rival-
ries are particularly susceptible to this, since nationalist scapegoating potential
will already exist. The likelihood of this working is also stronger when informa-
tion asymmetry between the leadership and public leads to the public being less
informed (Colaresi 2005, 26–27, 32).
Colaresi (2005, 23) presents the following 2x2 matrix in Table 2.1. It rep-
resents the relationship between the two independent variables, rivalry out-
bidding and expectations of future rivalry costs (showing up as the headers of
the rows and columns), and the values of the dependent variable, escalation,
de-­escalation, and maintenance, which are represented in the four cells.
On the right side, expectations of lower costs from the rivalry, no matter
whether rivalry outbidding is high or low, will likely lead to maintenance of
the rivalry (keeping the status quo), “since the benefits outweigh the costs”
(Colaresi 2005, 23). In other words, when expectations of costs are low, Cola-
resi believes that rivalry outbidding has no impact and the rivalry will always be
maintained. In the lower-­left cell, if expectations of costs from the rivalry are
high and there is low rivalry outbidding, then the state will intuitively choose
to de-­escalate the rivalry to cut future costs. In the top-­left cell, high rivalry
outbidding combined with expectations of higher costs from the rivalry will
likely lead to escalation of the rivalry, not de-­escalation. Colaresi explains that
if “there are high future expected costs, but the public is mobilized against a
rival . . . de-­escalation is unlikely. A leader who attempts to accommodate a
rival will be replaced” (2005, 21). Essentially, the argument is this: When there
is high rivalry outbidding (and high expected costs), the leader will choose to
escalate the rivalry.
This makes sense, but it points to an error in Colaresi’s logic for the upper-­
right cell. High rivalry outbidding resulting in escalation will occur in the upper-­
right cell as well. In fact, high rivalry outbidding is even more likely to result in
escalation there. If high rivalry outbidding can push a leader to escalate in the face
of high expected future costs, then it will easily push a leader to escalate in the

Table 2.1 The summary of Colaresi’s model

Expected future costs

High Low
Rivalry outbidding

High Escalation Maintenance

Low De-­escalation Maintenance

Source: Colaresi (2005, 23)

 Rivalry outbidding and expected costs 25
Table 2.2 The revised model

Expected future costs

High Low
Rivalry outbidding
High Escalation Escalation

Low De-­escalation Maintenance

Source: Adapted from Colaresi (2005, 23)

face of lower expected future costs. When the expected costs of the rivalry are low
but rivalry outbidding is high, a domestic leader can still resort to diversionary
tactics and play up the threat of the rival or spur hatred for the rival to generate
more public support. For this error in logic and for the rationalist assumption
that leaders want to remain in power above all else, I modify the model to argue
that high rivalry outbidding always results in escalation of the rivalry, no matter
the value of the expected costs. Table 2.2 revises Colaresi’s matrix.

Description of research design and methodology

The empirical research of this project is a broad, historical case study, relying on
secondary sources, of the relationship between China and Japan. Admittedly,
reliance on secondary sources is a weakness, but this was judged to be a necessity
given the broad, historical look. The research focuses on the effects of the inde-
pendent variables at important junctures in the Sino-­Japanese relationship during
the two periods of rivalry (1874–1945 and 1996–current).
What does it mean to look at the important junctures in the relationship? It
means the analysis will focus on the well-­known big events in the relationship –
the disputes, the wars, the instances of cooperation, and the instances of one state
taking advantage of the other. These are typically the events in which one or both
states chose to escalate, de-­escalate, and maintain the rivalry. There is a potential
problem, however. What does it mean to maintain the rivalry? How should it
be operationalized? Does it mean that one or both states perform no actions of
cooperation (de-­escalation) or coercion (escalation)? If so, then does it mean
doing nothing or trying to keep the status quo intact, even if that means keeping
an escalated state of the rivalry? If to maintain the rivalry means to do nothing,
then “maintain” as a value of the dependent variable is a continuous occurrence,
not a discrete event. Should every stretch of “no big events” in the rivalry be
listed as maintaining the rivalry? How long should such stretches of non-­activity
be? Any length of time would be arbitrarily chosen. Looking in detail at the long
stretches of non-­activity could lead to having to painstakingly cover the rivals’
26 Rivalry outbidding and expected costs
relationship on a month-­by-­month or week-­by-­week analysis to cover the contin-
uous status quo. This would be in addition to covering the discrete, large events.
Such a detailed analysis is difficult if we want to look at long historical periods.
Fortunately, in the Sino-­Japanese case, there is almost always something going
on in the relations between rivals – escalatory actions and counter-­reactions or
negotiations with rounds of talks occurring every six months. However, there are
two to three periods of relative stability, meaning this issue could lead to under-­
counting of the maintenance value of the dependent variable.
The following are the operationalizations of the variables.

Dependent variable (escalation/­de-­escalate/­maintain)

Escalate: This is operationalized as any act that militarizes the dispute, or one
that raises the level of militarization. This is also operationalized as acts that
raise diplomatic tensions or lead to a break in diplomatic relations. The
Japanese and Chinese governments are the actors in the analysis – so all acts
must be performed by either government. Members of the public cannot
escalate a rivalry, for instance, though a government permitting a protest to
take place can be an escalatory act.
De-­escalate: This is operationalized as any act of cooperation or any concrete
act to improve relations.
Maintain: This is problematic to operationalize, as previously discussed. It will
be operationalized as choosing to do nothing or to minimize the response
to an act of escalation or de-­escalation or as a reaction to an external shock-­
derived opportunity to escalate or de-­escalate the rivalry. Essentially, the
rival who is on the receiving end of the escalatory (or de-­escalatory) act
does not reciprocate. Or, the rival that can take advantage of the opportu-
nity presented by some external shock chooses not to take advantage. This
sounds like the best option for operationalizing this because it results in
maintaining the current level of the rivalry.

Independent variable – rivalry outbidding (high/­low)

High rivalry outbidding: This is operationalized as there being a prominent
opposition party, group of politicians, or other state-­related official (mili-
tary and bureaucracy included) that try to outflank the leadership with
respect to rivalry policy. That is to say, they argue for stronger anti-­rival
policies and try to rally public support behind them. High rivalry outbid-
ding is also present in governments with weak public support.
Low rivalry outbidding: This is operationalized as the situation in which there
are no possible domestic political opponents who can outflank the leader-
ship, or when a right-­wing government is in power with strong backing
from the public. It can occur when a leader has consolidated power to a
high degree, often through the absence of a strong opposition.
 Rivalry outbidding and expected costs 27

Independent variable – expected future costs of the

rivalry (high/­low)
High expected future costs: This is more vague than rivalry outbidding. I have
characterized this variable as high for a state when the state is involved in a
costly conflict with third party states or when one state is at a disadvantage
militarily. Sometimes it is a combination of these factors.
Low expected future costs: There are low expected costs when a state is not
involved in any other militarized conflicts with third party states or
when the state has a distinct military advantage over the rival.

The pattern of the empirical chapters

The empirical chapters cover the first Sino-­Japanese rivalry between the early
1870s–1895 (Chapter 3) and 1896–1937 (Chapter 4) and the second Sino-­
Japanese rivalry between the early 1990s and 2018 (Chapter 5). Because the
empirical chapters are lengthy, I want to explain how they are arranged. Chap-
ter 3 and Chapter 5 start with a section explaining the background to the
rivalry and how each rivalry started. Chapter 4 does not have this because
it continues the first rivalry from Chapter 3 (I split these because they were
too long to keep in one chapter, and the periods before and after the First
Sino-­Japanese War are quite different, both politically and with respect to the
rivalry).
All three empirical chapters then proceed in the following pattern: First, there
is a section explaining the values of the independent variables by going over the
history of the domestic and international politics of the time period. Then, I fol-
low this with a section describing the escalation, maintenance, and de-­escalation
in the rivalry. For Chapters 4 and 5, I split the time periods in two, so this pattern
is repeated. A short concluding section ends each chapter. This list summarizes
the patterns of the chapters:

Chapter 3: Origin of rivalry, description of independent variables (1874–

1895), description of rivalry (1874–1895), and conclusion.
Chapter 4: Description of independent variables (1896–1926), description of
rivalry (1896–1926), description of independent variables (1927–1937),
description of rivalry (1927–1937), and conclusion.
Chapter 5: Origin of rivalry, description of independent variables (1997–
2009), description of rivalry (1997–2009), description of independent var-
iables (2010–2018), description of rivalry (2010–2018), and conclusion.

Each section, except for the rivalry origin sections, features a summarizing table
at the end to keep track of the value of the independent variables, the predicted
values of the dependent variable, and the actual actions taken.
28 Rivalry outbidding and expected costs

Notes
1 The major exception to keeping to the international level is neoclassical realism,
which looks at factors inside the state level. Lai (2014) uses neoclassical realism to
explain the usage of nationalism in Sino-­Japanese relations.
2 One of the conclusions of this project is that the type of government is also relevant
here. A right-­wing, nationalistic government that has been scapegoating the rival
may be so far to the conflict side that it cannot be outbid. Rivalry outbidding would
be low in this case, because the nationalist government cannot be outflanked, but
the likelihood of escalation is still high since the government prefers conflict as if
there were high rivalry outbidding.

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NJ: Syracuse University Press).
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3 The Sino-­Japanese rivalry
in the 19th century

This chapter will provide support for the theoretical model described in the pre-
vious chapter by covering the events in the first Sino-­Japanese rivalry between
the Meiji Restoration and the First Sino-­Japanese War (1894–1895). This chap-
ter largely focuses on the Sino-­Japanese competition over Korea, which largely
defined the rivalry during this period. Using the terminology of Colaresi, Rasler,
and Thompson (2007, 79), the competition over control over Korea and other
territories makes the two countries both positional (leadership) and spatial (ter-
ritorial) rivals during this period. The chapter will also cover Sino-­Japanese rela-
tions as Japan emerged from the Meiji Restoration of 1868 in order to provide
background context for the start of the rivalry and ascertain the correct starting
date for the rivalry. It is a minor point, but it should be noted that Diehl and
Goertz (2001) and Colaresi, Rasler, and Thompson (2007) start this first part of
the rivalry in 1873. The evidence provided in what follows, based on Thompson
and co-­authors’ perceptual definition of rivalry, instead places its start date in
1874. China did not gain the perception that Japan was a rival until that year.

The origins of the first Sino-­Japanese rivalry

For several centuries, relations between China and its neighbors were based on
the Sino-­centric regional hegemonic order, in which the kingdoms surround-
ing China paid tribute to the Chinese Emperor in return for trade access. Japan
was an outlier in this hegemonic order, only taking part sporadically throughout
the centuries. But the Qing Dynasty started to weaken in the latter half of the
19th century after the long Taipeng Rebellion (1850–1864), the Opium Wars
(1839–1842, 1856–1860), and other instances of increasing Western encroach-
ment. Japan’s opening after the Meiji Restoration and adaptation of Western
governance and military structures coincided with China’s weakening grasp on
regional hegemony.
Coming out of the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan’s new government did
not initially think of China as a rival but rather prioritized seeking security against
the Western powers. Of particular concern for Japanese officials was the Korean
peninsula. After seeing what the Western powers had done to China by mid-­
century, the Japanese were concerned that Western powers, including Russia,
 The 19th century Sino-­Japanese rivalry 31
France, and the U.S., had plans to move onto Korea (Kim 1980, 88–89, 95,
105).1 Given Korea’s proximity to Japan, any Western encroachment into Korea
would pose a security threat to Japan. Among many members of the new Meiji
government, this security priority manifested itself in the policy debate known as
sei-­Kan ron – the debate over the subjugation of Korea. An early leader of this
emergent policy was Kido Takayoshi of Chōshū han, who first started pushing
for aggressive actions on the Korean peninsula in the 1860s during the last years
of bakufu rule (Kim 1980, 92–94). Kido was one of the three leading figures of
the Meiji Restoration known as the Ishin no Sanketsu – the others were Ōkubo
Toshimichi and Saigō Takamori of Satsuma. He had already been a leading voice
for reform during the bakumatsu years. Kido and others had pushed for the
bakufu to send Japanese forces to Korea or to force an alliance on Korea to hold
off Western encroachment.
A related concern was the security of Tsushima, an island province located half-
way between Korea and Kyushu. The Sō daimyo clan of Tsushima was the sole
link between the Korean kingdom and Japan during the Tokugawa Shogunate,
serving to maintain trade between Japan and Korea. The event that led to Japa-
nese concerns about Tsushima’s security was the Possadonick Incident in 1861, in
which a Russian warship landed at Tsushima under false pretenses and was soon
joined by several others. The Russians built structures on shore and then started
to demand a permanent lease on the island. This represented a grave escalation
over the Unequal Treaties that Japan had signed with several Western powers.
After nearly six months, Japan only evicted the Russians from Tsushima with the
help of British warships, a solution that only struck greater fear in the Japanese.
They now perceived that they faced not one but two imperial powers with sights
on Tsushima (Hino 1968, 203–235; Mizuno 2004, 188–189). The result was
that the bakufu and later the nascent Meiji government became concerned with
the security of both Tsushima and Korea.
The end of the bakufu disrupted early sei-­Kan planning, but after the Meiji
Restoration, the interim government in Tokyo (the Dajōkan) tried to get Seoul
to recognize the new governing structure in Japan by signing a trade pact. The
problem was that Seoul would not recognize contact with anyone other than the
Sō clan of Tsushima. Awkward attempts at communicating the announcement
of the new government and the request for a trade treaty using the Sō clan went
ignored by Seoul, which argued that they only needed to continue to deal with
the Sō (Kim 1980, 113–123). The Joseon Court in Seoul at the time was headed
by the regency of the Daewongun, Yi Ha-­eung (1820–1898), the father of King
Gojong. The Daewongun pushed a continuation of Korea’s policy of seclusion.
He was particularly distrustful of the Japanese. He preferred maintaining the
status quo of the Tsushima trade or even abandoning the trade over entering
into any bilateral relations with Japan. While the Japanese were wary of West-
ern encroachment in Korea, the Daewongun was wary of Japanese attempts to
reduce Korea to a tributary status under Japan (Eckert et al. 1990, 192–198).
After two years of impasse between Korea and Japan, amid mounting sei-­Kan
calls to invade Korea from Kido and his supporters, Japanese officials decided to
32 The 19th century Sino-­Japanese rivalry
move instead toward establishing new equal relations with China. Another one
of the Ishin no Sanketsu, Ōkubo Toshimichi, opposed taking unnecessary risks
in foreign policy and rose in opposition to Kido. Ōkubo gained the support of
top Dajōkan official Iwakura Tomomi (head of the soon-­to-­depart Iwakura Mis-
sion), who also favored caution and diplomacy over rash action. After this, Tokyo
decided to instead embark on a treaty negotiation with China with the belief that
they could then reapproach Korea for a treaty after they had gained de jure equal-
ity with China (Kim 1980, 131, 137).
In the triangle of relations between China, Japan, and Korea, China continued
to maintain the Sino-­centric order, but the Qing Court realized that Japan was
strengthening under its modernization process. In 1867, senior officials in the
Zongli Yamen, the Qing Court’s foreign policy arm, argued in a memorandum
to the throne that Japan “has greatly exerted itself and become strong” and that
“Japan’s ambitions are not small” (Kim 1980, 72). They also noted Japan’s grow-
ing interest in Korea, stating that “should Korea even be occupied by Japan,” the
consequences would be far worse than Western encroachment (Kim 1980, 72).2
The Qing thus started to note the potential for Japanese competition over Korea
even before the Meiji Restoration.
In the treaty negotiations of 1870, the Zongli Yamen debated several possibili-
ties that could result from signing or refusing to sign a treaty with Japan. The
Qing saw Japan as a potential competitor, but they also feared that Japan would
collaborate with the Western powers against China. The powerful general and
viceroy of Zhili Province, Li Hongzhang, who would go on to become the lead-
ing foreign policy decision-­maker in China, argued that China should reach an
agreement to become allied with Japan, to head off the latter allying itself with
the West. On the other hand, when Japan initially asked for the same privileges
as the Western powers in China, Chinese officials responded that they were fine
without a treaty (Kim 1980, 139–143).
After several rounds of negotiations largely steered by Li, delegates from the
two sides signed the Sino-­Japanese Treaty of Amity on September 13, 1871.
China and Japan included in Article I a pledge of non-­aggression against each
other’s states and territories, which Key-­Hiuk Kim argues Li included in order to
protect Korea from Japan. However, Japan did not object because it thought it
would not apply to Korea, since Korea was a tributary state of China (Kim 1980,
149). The Western-­style international treaty, based on a foundation of de jure
equality between the two states, was the first of its kind in East Asia, a break from
the Sino-­centric order, but Li and others rationalized that the resulting treaty did
not contradict the old order since Japan had not been a member of the order for
some time. Ultimately, Li was able to live with the implied contradiction in the
hope that Japan would cooperate with China against the West (Kim 1980, 144,
150–153). The two governments ratified the treaty in the spring of 1873.
With the treaty and both states’ perceptions and priorities, it should be clear
that China and Japan did not yet consider each other to be rivals. Chinese offi-
cials were starting to see the potential for competition with Japan, even in the
last years of the bakufu, but they did not yet consider Japan a threat. Meanwhile,
 The 19th century Sino-­Japanese rivalry 33
Japan was almost totally focused on the Western powers and securing a position
for itself in Korea, and Japanese officials did not prioritize relations with China
until they ran out of options to deal with Korea. As we see in what follows, how-
ever, the Mudan Incident on Taiwan and Japan’s renewed Korea focus would
eventually bring China and Japan into direct conflict with each other.

The start of the first Sino-­Japanese rivalry

The Mudan Incident on Taiwan in November 1871, in which 54 shipwrecked
Ryukyuans were massacred by local villagers in Mudan, located on the southern
tip of Taiwan, set up the first dispute between China and Japan. In this incident,
four boats carrying Ryukyuan villagers westward toward Miyako-­jima from Naha
hit a typhoon on October 18, 1871, only a month after the signing of the Sino-­
Japanese Treaty of Amity. One of the boats hit land at the southern tip of Taiwan.
There were 66 survivors; after wandering into a nearby village on November 8,
the locals ordered the survivors to stay put. However, the survivors attempted to
escape on November 9, at which point the locals started to kill them. Only 12
survived the massacred and returned to Miyako-­jima with the help of sympathetic
villagers. After some months of internal discussion, Tokyo started to address the
issue in the fall of 1872 and sent a mission headed by Soejima Taneomi to China
in the spring of 1873 (McWilliams 1975).
While ostensibly about China’s control of all of Taiwan, or lack thereof, and
Japan’s demands for action against the offending party in Taiwan, an additional,
deeper dispute concerned the sovereignty of the Ryukyuan islands. The Ryuky-
uan Kingdom had long been a part of the Sino-­centric trade-­tribute system and
the Qing Court thus considered them to be a Chinese tributary state, but they
were actually controlled by Japan, as a vassal state of warlords of Satsuma han on
Kyushu. When the Japanese han system was abolished in August 1871 in favor of
the prefectural system, the Ryukyu Kingdom initially retained its ambiguous sta-
tus under Japanese control and in the Sino-­centric order and was then converted
into Ryukyu han in 1872. When Soejima and other Japanese officials traveled to
Beijing in 1873, Soejima was careful not to bring up the Taiwan issue in the main
discussions involving himself; he left the Taiwan issue to his assistant, Yanagiwara
Sakimitsu, to discuss with Zongli Yamen officials. Instead, Soejima focused on
the issue of being received for an official audience with the Chinese Emperor.
The Qing wanted to maintain good relations with Japan after the 1871 treaty
and so they preoccupied themselves with debating this request. This effectively
distracted the Zongli Yamen from the Taiwan issue (McWilliams 1975, 269).
While protracted negotiations over the imperial audience issue continued,
Yanagiwara met two Yamen officials and abruptly brought up the issue of Chi-
nese control over Taiwan and Korea. McWilliams states that there are no written
records of this conversation on the Chinese side, only on the Japanese side, and
Yamen officials would later deny what Japanese officials wrote took place (McWil-
liams 1975, 264). Yanagiwara first brought up the irrelevant topic of Macao, and
the Chinese ministers argued that China held sovereign rights to Macao but had
34 The 19th century Sino-­Japanese rivalry
leased it to the Portuguese. Yanagiwara then brought up Korea, and the Chinese
officials argued that the Korean King paid tribute to the Qing but Korea was an
independent state and China exercised no control over it. Finally, Yanagiwara
brought up the Mudan Incident. Because of the massacre of the Ryukyuans,

. . . the Japanese Government intends, in the near future, to send a punitive

expedition against them. But since the aboriginal area is adjacent to territory
ruled by the Chinese government, our ambassador thought it best to inform
you before our government takes action, lest it might cause the slightest
disturbance to your territory or cause suspicion on your part and thereby
jeopardize the peaceful relations between our two empires.
(Quoted from McWilliams 1975, 265)

The Qing officials replied that the Japanese had no business doing so since the
dead were Ryukyuan subjects, not Japanese, and thus China had seen to the mat-
ter. Yanagiwara countered that the Japanese considered Ryukyu to be Japanese
and the Ryukyuans to be Japanese subjects. He then pressed the Yamen officials
to answer why the perpetrators of the massacre had not been punished, to which
the Chinese admitted that that part of Taiwan was beyond the reach of the Chi-
nese government. They offered to continue negotiations on the matter, but with
that admission, Yanagiwara ended the meeting by stating that he would inform
Soejima of the discussion (McWilliams 1975, 266).
McWilliams argues that Soejima did not want further negotiations on the mat-
ter, however. With these verbal statements from two Yamen officials, unrecorded
by the Chinese side, he avoided the complex and presumably conflictual discus-
sion between China and Japan over the sovereignty of the Ryukyuan Kingdom,
and he would be allowed to interpret the Chinese replies in his own way. He
subsequently exaggerated the Chinese replies by informing Tokyo that China
would stand aside if Japan sent military expeditions to Taiwan or Korea (McWil-
liams 1975, 267–268).
Before a punitive expedition to Taiwan could take place, however, the debate
over invading Korea (sei-­Kan ron) came back to the fore in 1873 (the 1873
­sei-­Kan ron is more well-­known than the previous debate detailed above). The
issue of Korea became important again, partially for domestic reasons but also
because of the leeway that Soejima argued China would grant. Domestically,
­samurai was angry about their reduced position in Meiji Japan, and their ­champion
in the government, Saigō Takamori, believed that war with Korea would preserve
the elite status of the samurai. A Korean invasion would also serve a diversion-
ary purpose by diverting the attention of the samurai from economic problems
(Kim 1980, 180–187). The Mudan Incident and consequential debate over the
expedition also occurred during the absence of many high-­ranking officials on
the Iwakura Mission to North America and Europe between December 1871
and September 1873. The most powerful leaders, Iwakura, Kido, Ōkubo, and
Itō Hirobumi, all took part in the mission. Before departing, they made Saigō
Takamori and other officials staying behind pledge that they would not make any
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