New Fukuda Doctrine And China-Japan Relations

The China-Japan relation is one of the most important bilateral relations for each other. Since entering the 21st century, the relation between the two countries has fell into low valley because of Koizumi's stiffly insisting on visiting the Yasukuni Shrine. Meanwhile, the structural contradictions between the two countries on Taiwan issue, the demarcation of the East China Sea and other issues had the trend of deterioration, exchange visits between the heads interrupted. It came to the unusual "frozen period" since the diplomatic relations between the two countries normalized in 1972. The main diplomatic mission for the successor of Koizumi was just to improve the China-Japan relation and meliorate the diplomatic environment for Japan. Therefore, Shinzo Abe tried not to defy China any more on the historical problems and did not visit the Yasukuni Shrine, which had cleaned off obstacles for the journey of "Ice-breaking", "Ice-melting" between China and Japan.Fukuda Yasuo, the successor of Shinzo Abe, cleared that he would not visit the Yasukuni Shrine and came up with the "New Fukuda Doctrine", attaching importance to its Asia diplomacy. China and Japan have devoted to promote comprehensive strategic mutually beneficial relationship and have gained progress on many issues. Japan' s declaration on Taiwan issue has reached a new height since 1972. The two parts has achieved principle consensuses on the demarcation of the East China Sea .The areas and depth of both regional cooperation have been intensified to some extent, the shared interests in fields of economy and environmental protection have been expanded, the probability to establish a "Economic-Environmental Community" before the establishment of the East Asian Community has been increased. New breakthroughs have been made in Sino-Japanese defense exchanges, and the steps to build strategic mutual trust have been moved in real terms.A good many improvements and breakthroughs of the China-Japan relation have been accomplished under the guidance of the "New Fukuda Doctrine". The fundamental reason for this lies in the changes of their role orientations. In this thesis, the newly achieved breakthroughs in a good many issues between the two countries have been attempted to be analyzed on the basis of the Constructivism Theory. In the view of Constructivism, it is the culture which constructs the national identity and interests, which decides the acts of states. The emphasized culture in the Constructivism Theory is the culture of international system(or named common culture), which is produced in the interactive process among countries. As analyzed, it can be found that the contradictions between China and Japan are essentially attributed to the lack of common culture of the two countries. And when both sides have a positive collective identity to try to construct a positive role of identity, positive interactions will be achieved and their relationship will be improved to some extent. And vice versa. We expect that the future China-Japan relation will become mature, stable and form a virtuous circle step by step by means of positive constructions.