Research On Japan’s Strategic Energy Plans And The Impact On SINO-Japanese Relation

Interests are the motivations of national behaviors under anarchy, and the factor behind interests is the traditional proposition of how to ensure the security of the nation. This paper aims at researching the possibility of cooperation and the development direction of Sino-Japanese relations under the background of "Seeking Common" while "Reserving Difference". Written from the view of Japan with the time node of the implementation of Japan’s new Strategic Energy Plan, the perspective of this paper is energy security, which is one of the factors of non-traditional national security.Generally speaking, various energies, represented by traditional energies like oil, gas and coal, not only drive the manufacturing industry, but also the development of today’s economy and society. Because of the unsubstitutability and maldistribution of traditional energies, the stability of the supply of fossil energies is on top of the "must list" of both developed and developing countries. Japan is a traditional developed country while China is a powerful developing country. The similarity in geography and demand of China and Japan becomes the very obstacle towards the way to "optima" that in fact, China and Japan have never been "good neighborhoods" since five score years ago. For Japan, its lack of resources force it to rely the development of domestic economy totally on the import of energy, but the advantages on high-technology make it one of the top in the field of new energy in the world. Back to China, the relative-rich natural resources can no longer keep the pace of the speed of development, which means that the energy cooperation with other countries, especially in the aspect of new energy technology, has a realistic significance. The uniformity in the demand of energy of China and Japan can easily be seen. From a theoretical perspective, Cooperation-Conflict was, is, and will still be an important subject in the theory of international relations. Neo-liberal institutionalism holds the opinion that international cooperation could be realized in the help of international mechanisms and regimes (or "Seek Common" in this paper), while neo-realism thinks that cooperation under anarchy) is almost impossible to be achieved. Even the cooperation could be achieved, it would be difficult to maintain (or "Reserve Difference" in this paper).The research approach of this paper is starting from the reality, and returning back to the reality after theoretical analysis. Game theory analysis will be used to discuss the possible problems on energy under the situations of "Optimum" and "Suboptimum", and the cooperation mechanism and national relations between China and Japan will be finally discussed.