An Analysis Of The Change And Motivation Of Japan's Policies Toward China During Abe's Two Political Periods

Since the 21 st century,with the changes in the economic power of China and Japan,the competition between the two powers has gradually become clearer.Especially after China's GDP surpassing Japan and leaping into second place in the world in 2010,China and Japan have entered the strategic adjustment period.How to adapt and shape the relationship with China has become a crucial issue in Japan's diplomatic policies.As a constitutional monarchy country,Japan's prime minister plays an important role in the formulation and adjustment of the diplomacy policy toward China,furthermore,would have a profound impact on China-Japan relations.Today's Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's two-period ruling experience and the divergent foreign policies toward China have attracted the attention of scholars.During his first political period,Shinzo Abe actively ameliorated the diplomatic relation with China and advocated the establishment of China-Japan strategic relationship of mutual benefit.Five years later,however,Abe changed his "strategic mutual benefits" policy toward China into a tough stance after taking office again.It can be seen that Abe's China policy during the two political periods has undergone earth-shaking changes.What factors forced him to be moderate and friendly to China for the first political period?What motivated him to change his policy and began to target China when he took office for the second time?These issues are of great value for guiding China's correct view of Abe's China policy and correctly handling Sino-Japanese relations in the future,moreover,it is worthy of further study.This paper studies from the perspective of neoclassical realism theory,which is the theory that emerged in the 1990s as the time required and has been gradually maturing over twenty years.The neoclassical realism theory takes the system level and the domestic level as analytical perspectives,in the meantime,achieves the leapfrogging of the two levels.This paper extracts the pressure and opportunities from the changing of Asian-Pacific Pattern as the independent variable,and adopts the cognitive intervention brought by leader images and the social opinion in the state-social relationship,institution intervention made by the domestic political party system,the ruling party's censorship and the parliamentary system and so on as intermediary variables.After the independent variable is imported into the country,it influences the domestic process "perception—decision-making—policy impementation”under the intervention of the intermediary variables.It is a complicated process to analyze the motivation of adjustment of Abe's policies toward China.The analysis of the adjustment and motivation of Japan's policies toward China during Abe's two political periods could provide a scientific and rational perspective in the analysis and research of Sino-Japanese relations at present and in the future.It's of great significance in correctly analyzing Abe's behaviors of sending friendly signals to China and visiting China in 2018 and clarifying Abe s intention to increase his approval rating and performance through promoting economic cooperation with China and seek a new path of economic development under the background of U.S.'s trade protectionism.The conclusion of the article is based on the analysis of the full text and suggests that China should proceed from the national interests and the overall situation,maintain stability and safeguard rights at the same time,and rationally handle the following Sino-Japanese relation to take the initiative in the international contest.