Achieving political influence in Asia: Changes in Japan's foreign policy toward China and U.S.-Japanese relations, 1972-1992

The 1951 U.S.-Japanese Security treaty set the stage whereby Japanese foreign policy and security policy would be subordinate to U.S. post-war containment policy. Japan's dependent foreign policy in the past two decades has undergone dramatic transformation against the backdrop of international changes. Conflicts between the U.S. and Japan have heightened as Tokyo strives for diplomatic autonomy. Increasingly and openly, Japan is defying policy objectives of the United States.;Japan's foreign policy toward China was no exception. Since the early 1970s, Japan has become more assertive in pursuing its national interests in China, which has been defined as stabilizing the bilateral relationship and cooperation. Japan's 1972 diplomatic normalization with China marked the beginning of Japan's search for an autonomous China policy. Since then, Tokyo has not only intensified its economic relationship with China through economic assistance, trade and foreign direct investment; it has also placed more emphasis on its political and security relationship with China.;Economic interdependence between Japan and China continues to deepen in the late 1980s as mutual needs and vulnerability draw the two countries closer than ever. Moreover, the importance of Sino-Japanese political cooperation on regional affairs looms large in the late 1980s. Sino-Japanese cooperation is becoming indispensable in bringing peace and stability to Cambodia and the Korean peninsula.;The objectives of this dissertation are two-fold: first, it argues that Japan's China policy in the last two decades have gradually departed from the principles of U.S.-Japanese cooperation originated in the early days of the Cold War as Tokyo strives for diplomatic autonomy and political influence in Asia and in China particularly. Second, changes in Japan's China policy and the U.S.-Japanese relationship in general can be attributed to the relative decline of the U.S. hegemony, or the realist notion of "uneven growth of power.".