ABSTRACT
In January 2005, China overtook the United States to become Japan’s biggest trading partner. In April 2005, with the evident connivance of the government (in a country where free political expression is tightly circumscribed), thousands of Chinese citizens took to the streets in some of the country’s biggest cities to oppose Japan’s claim to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council and to protest against the way in which Japan’s Pacific War record was portrayed in a newly approved school history textbook. The confluence of these two events inspired this chapter.1 Their occurrence, so close to each other, illustrates a striking trait of contemporary East Asia: while the countries in East Asia are rapidly becoming more and more economically interdependent, international politics in the region are volatile. Judgements as to exactly how volatile they are vary and there are in any case wide variations in the degree of their volatility within the region. But most observers of the region’s politics would likely agree that, overall, political relations between East Asian states have not improved commensurately with the intensification of their economic ties and a significant number would not regard wars in East Asia as inconceivable.
