This paper aims to identify the relationship between Chinese culture and foreign policy. By ignoring the role of culture, rational choice theories have attracted criticism from cultural approaches such as strategic culture. However, instead of being a direct causal factor in policy decisions, as strategic culture claims, culture should be regarded as a constitutive factor that forms a country’s perception of its objective environment and of significant Other(s). In a similar vein, Chinese culture also constitutes the country’s perception of the Other, based on which its fundamental foreign policy direction has evolved. This paper will focus in particular on
guanxi, a special type of interpersonal relationship that strongly reflects Chinese culture, and analyze how it influences China’s perception of, and policy towards, Japan.
Japan’s identity as China’s significant Other has been constituted in the context of
guanxi. China’s generosity in foregoing war reparations and the lack of disputes with Japan during the post-normalization decade was not born out of pure goodwill, but was due to a pattern of cultural behavior that involved morally dominating the
guanxi with Japan. Since China considered the
guanxi as one of amity in this period, conflicts such as territorial disputes over Diaoyu/Senkaku were quickly resolved; the parties put these differences behind them as if they did not even exist. However, Japan’s identity as a friend started to deteriorate in the 1980s. The new
guanxi of friendship with Japan was premised on Japan repenting its past aggression and behaving accordingly, as China insisted in the 1972 Communiqué. Therefore, Tokyo’s policies over history textbooks, the Yasukuni shrine, and the Kokaryo case made it seem to the Chinese that Japan was not seriously repenting its past. In the eyes of China, Japan failed to live up to its moral obligation in their
guanxi, and the entire foundation of reciprocity and amity started to crumble. After a period of reinterpretation of Japan’s identity through bilateral interactions during the1982–89 Sino–Japanese
guanxi, China was disappointed with Japan’s negligence of its moral obligation. As a result, memories of Japan’s invasion were recalled, and negative perception of this neighbor was consolidated in the 1990s. Thus, a
guanxi of enmity began to dominate China’s policy towards Japan, and has exerted a powerful negative inertia ever since then. In response to China’s Japan policy, with its undertone of enmity, Japan’s perception of China also deteriorated, and the two have become bogged down in a bilateral structure that benefits neither.
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