Japan's Economic Diplomacy To India (1952-2017)

On April 28^th,1952,the Treaty of San Francisco came into force and Japan became independent.Since then,economic diplomacy has played an important role in Japanese diplomacy.Since 1950s,Japan has been engaged in economic diplomacy with India.In the late 1950s and early 1960s,Japan's economic diplomacy with India reached its first climax and relations between the two countries were greatly strengthened.Since then,economic diplomacy and economic relations between the two countries have been developing slowly.In the 1980s,Japan strengthened its relations with India,and economic diplomacy reached a second climax;Japan's economic and diplomatic relations with India developed smoothly in the early and mid 1990s;In 1998,India's nuclear test invoked sanctions from Japan.That period became the low point of Japan-India relations as well as the low tide of economic diplomacy.At the beginning of the 21^stt century,Japan reviewed its relations with India and launched a comprehensive and intensive economic diplomacy with India with ever increasing intensity,thus bringing relations between the two countries to a new level.Japan-India relationship becomes more conspicuous than ever.This thesis analyzes the varying intensity of Japan's economic diplomacy with India by studying the four variables of Official Development Assistance?ODA?,Foreign Direct Investment?FDI?,trade relations,head-of-state economic diplomacy as well as Economic Partnership Agreement?EPA?,and validate the hypothesis of Japan strengthening economic diplomacy with India.Reviewing India's journey from an unvalued developing country to the most valued one in Japan's economic diplomacy in this century,this thesis considers that Japan's shift in its big power strategy has played a decisive role.This thesis holds that Japan's big power strategy can be generally divided into three stages of economic power,political power and security power.Japan takes the membership of permanent Security Council as a shortcut to become a political power and tries to establish close relations with India through economic diplomacy so as to jointly become the security council permanent members.To achieve its big power strategy,Japan has formed a series of supporting sub-strategies including security strategy,economic strategy,strategy of"permanent membership",values strategy,balance China strategy,geopolitical strategy,etc.These have all contributed to Japan's change of attitude towards India,and are also the reason why Japan strengthens its economic diplomacy with India.In the end,the thesis evaluates Japan's economic diplomacy with India,previews Japan-India relationship and makes a prediction of China-India-Japan relations.