Japan’s maritime security interests in Southeast Asia and the South China Sea dispute

Introduction

Over the past several years, Japanese politicians, academics and security practitioners have perceived a sharp deterioration in the country’s security environment. In June 2013, for example, at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera described Japan’s security environment as ‘increasingly severe’, an assessment echoed by the government’s defence White Paper released a month later. ¹ The reasons for this decline have been ascribed to two principal developments. First, North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programme, which Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida has warned is a ‘serious threat to regional peace and stability’. ² Second, security challenges associated with the rise of China, especially the Sino-Japanese sovereignty dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, the rapid modernization of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and ongoing tensions among six parties (China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei) over territorial and maritime boundary disputes in the South China Sea. ³

With regards to the second of these challenges, much scholarly and media attention has focused on the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute, and rightly so. ⁴ Although Japan identifies the security situation on the Korean Peninsula as its primary security concern, in reality, the risk of a military clash with China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands would appear to be much higher than Japan’s Self Defense Forces (SDF) being drawn into a conflict between North and South Korea. This is because since Tokyo ‘nationalized’ three of the atolls in September 2012, China has been attempting to challenge Japanese administration of the Senkaku/Diaoyu by significantly stepping up the presence of PLA-Navy and civilian maritime agency vessels in waters surrounding the islands. ⁵ According to Japan’s Ministry of Defense, the number of incursions by Chinese government ships into the territorial waters of the disputed atolls increased from zero in 2010 to 23 in 2012 and 21 in the first four months of 2013 alone. ⁶ The potential for an accidental clash between the armed forces of the two countries was brought into sharp relief in January 2013, when Japan alleged that Chinese frigates had directed their fire control radars at a Japanese naval helicopter and destroyer. ⁷ Absent effective conflict prevention mechanisms and regular channels of communication, a small incident between the Chinese and Japanese armed forces could quickly escalate into a major military and diplomatic crisis, made all the more serious by the fact that Washington regards the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands as covered by the 1960 US–Japan Security Treaty and would be obliged to assist Japan militarily. ⁸

Conversely, Japan’s views on the South China Sea dispute, and the policies governments have adopted in response to rising tensions since 2007/2008, have elicited very little attention from academics and the media, at least in English. ⁹ This is surprising for several reasons. First, since Japan’s economic take-off in the 1960s, the security of the country’s sea lines of communication (SLOC) have been seen by Japanese policymakers as critically important to national security. As a resource-poor country whose prosperity depends upon export-led growth, any threat to the free flow of maritime trade is viewed as existential. Some of Japan’s most important SLOCs pass through the South China Sea, and successive governments have invested considerable financial resources to secure them. Thus, while Japan is not a claimant in the South China Sea, it is an important stakeholder in the dispute and has a strongly vested interest in maintaining stability. Second, from Japan’s perspective, the disputes in the South China Sea and East China Sea are inextricably linked. For Tokyo, Beijing’s strategy in the two seas is, to all intents and purposes, identical, and Japan has increasingly expressed concern that China’s actions in both areas risk undermining international legal norms, freedom of navigation and peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific. Third, Japan’s responses to the South China Sea dispute illustrate the central elements of its foreign and defence policies in the post-Cold War era: a strong preference to address security problems multilaterally at regional security forums; strengthening its alliance with the US; and providing capacity-building support on a bilateral basis within constitutional and legal restrictions.

This article seeks to fill the gap in the literature on Japanese perceptions of and policy towards the South China Sea dispute. It begins by analysing the central importance of Southeast Asia’s maritime domain to Japanese national and economic security, and how Tokyo’s concerns have evolved over the past five decades: from safety of navigation, to transnational threats, to China’s expansive claims and assertive posture in the South China Sea. The article goes on to identify Japan’s concerns in the South China Sea since the late 2000s, that is, the potential negative impact on legal norms and sea lane security, and how Japanese analysts view the South and East China disputes as linked. It then examines Japan’s four main policy responses to the problem: to multilateralize and internationalize the dispute; to enhance cooperation with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on maritime security issues and promote unity within the organization over the South China Sea; to increase capacity-building support to certain Southeast Asian claimants, principally, the Philippines; and to strengthen relations and policy coordination with the US and, in the future, other countries, such as India and Australia.

Japan and maritime security in Southeast Asia

At the end of World War II, the US sought to disarm, demilitarize and democratize Japan. In 1947, the defeated nation was forced to accept the so-called Peace Constitution by which, under Article 9, Japan renounced war as a sovereign right and the use of force to resolve international disputes. ¹⁰ As a means to rebuild national power and regain great power status, Japan’s most influential post-war leader, Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, crafted a set of principles that was to guide the country’s foreign policy for decades to come. The Yoshida Doctrine, as it became known, enunciated three principles. ¹¹ First, Japan’s primary national goal was economic rehabilitation. Second, Japan would remain lightly armed and avoid foreign entanglements in international political-strategic issues. Third, Japan’s long-term security was dependent on a close relationship with the US and the presence of US military bases in the country. Although the onset of the Cold War led the US to encourage Japan to rearm, and Article 9 was reinterpreted to allow for the right of self-defence (and thus the establishment of the SDF in 1954), the Yoshida Doctrine remained, in the words of Kenneth Pyle, ‘a national consensus’. ¹²

Japan’s single-minded focus on economic development meant that Southeast Asia came to occupy a prominent position in the country’s trade, foreign and security policies. Put simply, resource-poor Japan needed access to the region’s commodities and foodstuffs, and as the economy boomed during the 1960s and 1970s, Southeast Asia became an important destination for Japanese manufactured goods and investment. Japan’s interests in Southeast Asia were dependent on the free flow of maritime trade through regional strategic chokepoints – such as the Singapore, Malacca, Sunda, Lombok and Makassar straits – and the South China Sea. Sea lane security thus became a critical national security concern for Japan, as it had been for other great maritime trading powers throughout history, such as Holland, Portugal, Great Britain and the US. Unlike those countries, however, Japan was constricted in its use of naval power to secure its maritime interests. The Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force (JMSDF) was limited by the Constitution to the protection of the homeland, and it was not until the 1980s that the navy was allowed to defend the country’s SLOCs out to 1000 nautical miles. ¹³ Second, the legacy of Japanese aggression in Southeast Asia during World War II was such that regional states such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore would have found an overt Japanese security role unpalatable. Instead, and consistent with the third principle of the Yoshida Doctrine, Japan relied heavily on the US Navy to uphold freedom of navigation in Southeast Asia and beyond. Yet, Japan was no free-rider, and was proactive in providing capacity-building support to the littoral states such as Indonesia and Malaysia in order to secure its navigational interests. In this way, as Euan Graham explains, Japan adopted a ‘composite’ approach ‘blending official and private diplomacy (via non-government and commercial organizations) as well as relying on other maritime states to pursue the more confrontational aspects of freedom of navigation in the region’. ¹⁴

The principal mechanism through which Japan provided aid to the littoral states was the Malacca Strait Council (MSC), established in 1968 and funded by the Japanese government and private shipping organizations in Japan. The MSC funded hydrographic surveys of the Malacca Straits and financed the purchase, installation and maintenance of navigational aids such as buoys, light beacons, lighthouses and a traffic separation scheme. ¹⁵ According to Graham, between 1968 and 2001, the MSC provided 13 billion Yen in financial and technical support to the littoral states. ¹⁶ Japan’s support for the MSC was designed to enhance the country’s economic security and was, thus, far from altruistic. Nevertheless, Japanese aid ensured safety of navigation for all shipping, a public good of critical importance to the expansion of world trade and the spread of globalization.

Japan and the South China Sea dispute

The South China Sea dispute centres on overlapping sovereignty claims to hundreds of small atolls and their associated maritime zones. ²⁹ The two main archipelagos under dispute are the Paracel Islands and the Spratly Islands. The Paracels dispute is a bilateral problem between China and Vietnam. In 1974, China occupied the whole of the Paracels when the PLA dislodged South Vietnamese troops from the western part of the archipelago. Vietnam considers this action to have been illegal and still claims sovereignty over the entire group. Further south lies the Spratlys, a group comprising several hundred insular features including islands, rocks and reefs. China, Taiwan and Vietnam claim sovereignty over all of the features in the Spratlys; Malaysia and the Philippines claim parts of the group; and two features lie within Brunei’s 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ), and although the government has never made a formal sovereignty claim to them, Brunei is usually listed as a claimant. ³⁰ Sovereignty of Scarborough Shoal – which lies 130 nautical miles west of Luzon and is technically not part of the Spratlys – is claimed by both China and the Philippines. In addition to China’s claims to the Paracels and Spratlys, official Chinese maps indicate a discontinuous nine-dash line encompassing approximately 80% of the South China Sea. However, as examined later, Beijing’s reluctance to explain what the nine dashes denote has aroused concern across the region.

Japan played a minor role in the South China Sea dispute prior to World War II. In the 1920s and 1930s, Japanese phosphate companies were active in the Spratlys, and in 1939, Imperial Japan occupied atolls in the Paracels and Spratlys as part of its aggressive expansion in China and Southeast Asia. ³¹ Japan stationed troops on Spratly Island and established a submarine base on the largest of the islands, Itu Aba. ³² When Imperial Japan was defeated in August 1945, Japanese forces were withdrawn, and in 1951, Tokyo renounced its claims to the Paracel and Spratly Islands under the San Francisco Peace Treaty. ³³ Since then, Japan has not taken a position on the territorial claims of any of the six parties.

Tensions in the South China Sea have been cyclical. As the Cold War thawed in the late 1980s, the dispute emerged as a prominent regional security issue. Friction among the disputants began to heat up as they moved to strengthen their sovereignty claims – particularly China through the passage of domestic legislation in 1992 ³⁴ – and exercise sovereign rights to maritime resources in their EEZs provided for by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which came into force in 1994. In the second half of the 1990s, the dispute became a major source of bilateral tension between Beijing and Manila (especially after China’s occupation of Philippine-claimed Mischief Reef in 1995), and Beijing and Hanoi. Tensions eased considerably in the early 2000s, principally because China adopted a more accommodating position as part of its so-called ‘Charm Offensive’ in Southeast Asia. Most notably, in 2002, ASEAN and China signed the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DoC), a non-binding conflict management mechanism, and in 2005, the state-owned energy companies of China, the Philippines and Vietnam agreed to conduct joint seismic explorations in disputed waters. ³⁵ The dispute moved to the back burner of regional security issues.

Since 2007/2008, and especially since 2010, however, tensions have been rising due to a combination of factors: growing nationalism over ownership of the atolls; moves by some of the claimants to strengthen their territorial and jurisdictional claims through national legislation, submissions to the United Nations (UN) and acts of administration such as the establishment of regular postal, tourism and telecommunications links; increasing competition over access to natural resources, especially fisheries and hydrocarbons; the rapid modernization of the PLA-Navy and expansion of China’s civilian maritime law enforcement agencies, which have enabled Beijing to increase its presence in the South China Sea and exert coercive pressure on Vietnam and the Philippines; and, as a result of growing tensions, America’s more proactive policy towards the dispute.

During the first two decades of the post-Cold War period, Japan does not seem to have viewed the South China Sea dispute as a pressing concern or as a threat to sea lane security. This lack of concern is reflected in two of Japan’s regular English-language assessments of the country’s security environment: the East Asia Strategic Review (EASR), published since 1996 by the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS), and Japan’s annual defence White Papers. ³⁶

In the 1990s, the EASR devoted most of its analysis to the perceived threat to Japan posed by North Korea, China’s policy towards Taiwan and the strengthening of US–Japan strategic ties. In the decade following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, both the EASR and defence White Papers focused on terrorism, the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD; including North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme) and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. China’s rising economic, political and military power was also a consistent theme throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Both publications, but particularly the defence White Papers, note with some concern the activities of China’s maritime agencies in the waters surrounding Japan, as well as the lack of transparency concerning the modernization of its armed forces and rising defence outlays. In terms of Southeast Asian security, the two publications assessed the fallout from the 1997/1998 Asian Financial Crisis, the rising incidents of piracy and, post-9/11, Islamic extremism. The South China Sea dispute was mentioned only in passing. While the Mischief Reef Incident led to a major crisis in Sino-Philippine relations, and aroused concern across the region, the 1996–1997 EASR merely referred to it as China establishing a ‘foothold’ in the Spratlys. ³⁷ Between 2006 and 2010, Japan’s defence White Papers simply listed the South China Sea dispute as one of several ‘destabilizing factors’ in Southeast Asia. ³⁸ In general, until the late 2000s, Japanese analysts adopted a neutral, even positive, view of China–Southeast Asia relations. The 2007 EASR, for example, recognized China’s efforts to dispel regional anxieties associated with its rising power – including the 2002 DoC – and that Beijing ‘actively seeks to settle territorial disputes in a peaceful manner’ in the South China Sea. ³⁹ The 2008 Defense of Japan lamented, however, the lack of progress between ASEAN and China to negotiate a legally binding Code of Conduct for the South China Sea (CoC). ⁴⁰

The year 2010 marked a negative turning point in Sino-Japanese relations. In September, the detention of the captain of a Chinese fishing trawler that had allegedly rammed a JCG vessel near the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands sparked a diplomatic crisis between the two countries. Exactly two years later, bilateral relations plunged to a post-war low following the Japanese government’s decision to ‘nationalize’ three of the privately owned atolls in the disputed islands. In China’s view, this action represented a unilateral change in the status quo by Japan, and it responded by increasing naval and air patrols in the vicinity of the islands in what appears to be a concerted effort to challenge Japan’s jurisdictional claims. Following the Japanese government’s decision, anti-Japanese demonstrations took place in hundreds of cities across China.

Even before the upsurge of tensions in the East China Sea, Japan’s defence White Papers were registering growing concern over China’s military posture. Between 1988 and 1997, China raised defence spending by an annual average of 14.5%, rising to 15.9% between 1998 and 2007. ⁴¹ In 2012, China’s official defence spending rose to US$106 billion, the second highest in the world – admittedly a long way behind the US, which spent US$614 billion, but nevertheless the highest in Asia. ⁴² These trends stood in marked contrast to Japan’s political, economic and military milieu. Since the early 1990s, the Japanese economy has been mired in recession, a problem compounded by weak political leadership. As a direct consequence of economic stagnation, defence spending remained flat: in 1999, Japan spent US$54.39 billion on its armed forces and in 2011, US$54.53 billion (in constant 2010 US dollars). ⁴³ While the 2008 White Paper stated that Japan ‘desired’ China to show greater transparency over its military modernization programme, a year later, it declared that China had ‘not yet reached the levels of transparency expected of a major regional power’. ⁴⁴ By 2010, Tokyo was warning that this lack of transparency had become a ‘matter of concern for the regional and international community’ and that it could lead to a ‘sense of mistrust and misunderstanding in other countries’. ⁴⁵ By 2013, the tone had hardened even further, with Japan accusing China of reduced transparency in terms of its defence budget and the PLA of conducting ‘dangerous activities’ in Japanese territorial waters and airspace and undermining the country’s security environment. ⁴⁶

As bilateral relations worsened, Japanese analysts also began expressing heightened concern over negative trends in the South China Sea. NIDS, for instance, pointed to increasing tensions between the claimants beginning in 2009, and attributed this to a greater Chinese military presence in the South China Sea, as well as America's more engaged policy towards the dispute. ⁴⁷ Analysts also noted that China’s ‘assertive actions’ in the South China Sea had led some ASEAN members to increase defence spending and modernize their armed forces and facilitated increased security cooperation between some Southeast Asian countries and the US. ⁴⁸ The 2012 EASR concluded that due to China’s growing military capabilities and influence within ASEAN, Beijing had little reason to make concessions over the dispute and therefore the situation would remain ‘unstable’ for the foreseeable future. ⁴⁹ Japan is concerned that the dispute has the potential to undermine sea lane security in the South China Sea. As described earlier, since at least the 1960s, this has been Tokyo’s principal security interest in Southeast Asia. And given that Japan’s ‘survival and prosperity’ depends on secure SLOCs, this is unlikely to change. ⁵⁰ Japanese trade figures for 2010 underscore the critical importance of the regional sea lanes. In that year, the value of two-way commerce between Japan and the 10 members of ASEAN was US$214 billion; with South Asia (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) US$17.8 billion; and with the European Union US$147 billion. ⁵¹ More than 90% of Japan’s energy supplies also transit through the region. While few people predict a major war in the South China Sea, conflict, accidental or otherwise, cannot be ruled out. Any conflict would, of course, severely disrupt Japan’s vital SLOCs.

Japanese concerns over the South China Sea have grown in tandem with rising tensions in the East China Sea because Tokyo views the two disputes as inextricably linked.

Observers in Japan believe that China’s policy towards the two disputes is more or less identical. In particular, as the 2013 defence White Paper argues, China’s strategy towards the other claimants is to weaken their ‘effective control’ of the atolls they claim or occupy while at the same time strengthening its own territorial and jurisdictional claims using the navy and other maritime agencies. ⁵² As noted, China’s strategy in the East China Sea is to challenge and undermine Japanese jurisdiction over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. In 2012, China successfully employed this strategy at Scarborough Shoal, using its superior maritime agencies to force the Philippines to withdraw its own vessels and thereby gaining de facto control over the disputed atoll. ⁵³ In reference to the Scarborough Shoal incident during a visit to Manila in June 2013, Defence Minister Onodera highlighted the connection between the South and East China Seas disputes by noting that Japan was ‘very concerned that this kind of situation could affect the situation in the East China Sea’. ⁵⁴ Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was even more direct when he wrote that if Tokyo conceded control of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, this would embolden Beijing in the South China Sea:

Japan must not yield to the Chinese government’s daily exercises in coercion around the Senkaku Islands.… By making these boats’ presence appear ordinary, China seeks to establish its jurisdiction in the waters surrounding the islands as a fait accompli.… If Japan were to yield, the South China Sea would become even more fortified. ⁵⁵

Japan is perturbed that China’s actions towards its territorial disputes in the maritime domain hinder access to the “global commons” (defined by the government as sea, space and cyberspace), undermines international legal norms and puts at risk freedom of navigation. ⁵⁶ Emblematic of Tokyo’s disquiet is China’s nine-dash line map (also referred to as the U-shaped line map). As mentioned earlier, Beijing has never officially explained what the nine dashes represent but four potential meanings have been advanced. ⁵⁷ First, China is claiming sovereignty over all of the islands inside the line, as well as their 12-nautical-mile territorial seas and 200-nautical-mile EEZ. Second, the area within the line represents China’s ‘historic waters’. Third, the waters bounded by the U-shaped line are an EEZ and continental shelf claim generated by the Paracels, Spratlys and Scarborough Shoal. Fourth, China claims sovereignty over all of the disputed islands, an EEZ and continental shelf generated by those islands, as well as ‘historic rights’ to the entire maritime space, including entitlement to all living and non-living resources.

Increasingly, it appears that it is the fourth of these interpretations that has become China’s de facto official line. Although the U-shaped line had appeared on Chinese maps since the late 1940s, it was not until 2009 that China officially lodged a copy of the map with the UN attached to a note verbale protesting a joint submission by Vietnam and Malaysia to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. ⁵⁸ In the note, China declared that it had ‘indisputable sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea and the adjacent waters, and enjoys sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the relevant waters as well as the seabed and subsoil thereof (see attached map)’. In 2011, the state-owned energy company China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) invited tenders for nine offshore blocks covering 160,000 km² in the South China Sea. ⁵⁹ The blocks, which CNOOC described as being in ‘waters under the jurisdiction of the People’s Republic of China’, lie at the outermost limits of the nine-dash line and entirely within Vietnam’s claimed EEZ. ⁶⁰ The closest China has come to an official articulation of the fourth interpretation occurred in 2013, when Zhiguo Gao – a Chinese judge on the UN’s International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) – published a co-authored article which argued that the U-shaped line was justified under international law and had:

become synonymous with a claim of sovereignty over the island groups that always belonged to China and with an additional Chinese claim of historical rights of fishing, navigation, and other marine activities (including the exploitation of resources, mineral or otherwise) on the islands and in the adjacent waters. ⁶¹

The legal basis for China’s U-shaped line has been questioned by governments and legal experts across the region. Indonesia formally challenged the map at the UN in 2010, followed by the Philippines in 2013. ⁶² Earlier, in 2011, Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert Del Rosario described the map as ‘the crux’ of the South China Sea problem and a ‘stumbling block’ to its resolution: ‘The Philippines contends that the 9-dash claim of China is, to put it plainly, illegal. It is arbitrary and bereft of any basis or validity under international law, specifically UNCLOS’. ⁶³ While Vietnam has not formally protested the map, Vietnamese leaders have declared that it has no legal basis. ⁶⁴ Singapore is not a claimant, but has expressed reservations about the legality of China’s claims. In a Keynote Address during an academic conference in Singapore, former senior minister and law expert Professor S. Jayakumar described the map as ‘puzzling and disturbing’ as it could be ‘interpreted as being a claim on all the maritime areas within the nine dotted lines’. ⁶⁵ Several days later, Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called on China to clarify its claims in the South China Sea ‘with more precision as the current ambiguity as to their extent has caused serious concerns in the international maritime community’. ⁶⁶ Singapore’s Ambassador-at-Large Tommy Koh has pointed out that if China is only claiming the insular features within the nine-dash line, this can be consistent with UNCLOS, but that if it is claiming sovereignty over the features and the waters, this is incompatible with UNCLOS. ⁶⁷

Officially, Japan has not challenged the U-shaped line, though it has called on all the claimants, including China, to clarify their maritime claims. ⁶⁸ In private, however, Japanese officials argue that the nine-dash line has no legal basis and that if China persuades, or coerces, neighbouring countries into accepting the historical bases of its maritime claims, this would fundamentally undermine the norms enshrined in UNCLOS. ⁶⁹ According to Del Rosario, Prime Minister Abe expressed support for the Philippines’ January 2013 submission to the UN – which challenges the legal validity of the nine-dash line – during a visit to Manila in May 2013. ⁷⁰

China’s claim that it has the right to regulate navigational activities – including the movement of warships – in its EEZ and within the U-shaped line as a whole also concerns Japan. While most governments view foreign military surveillance activities in the EEZ of a coastal state as legitimate and permissible under UNCLOS, China regards such actions as illegal. ⁷¹ This interpretation (which a dozen or so countries around the world, including in Asia, support) puts the US and China at odds, and has resulted in a series of crises, including the 2001 EP-3 surveillance plane and 2009 Impeccable incidents. The issue of foreign military surveillance activities in the EEZ of a coastal state poses a dilemma for Japan. In general, Tokyo supports the position of the US, but does not do so publicly because this would prevent it from criticizing China for conducting the same kinds of activities in Japan’s EEZ, which, as its defence White Papers reveal, it views with dismay.

Japan’s policy responses

Tokyo’s response to the deteriorating situation with Beijing in the East China Sea, and related concerns, has been to accelerate the restructuring and repositioning of its armed forces. The government plans to boost the SDF’s presence in the south-west of the country so as to improve deterrence, surveillance of foreign ships and aircraft, and the defence of offshore islands. ⁷² In addition, Japan is improving interoperability and training with the US military (especially in amphibious warfare), a trend that has been underway since the mid-2000s. ⁷³ The Abe government has also raised defence spending for the first time in over a decade (albeit by only 0.8%). ⁷⁴

As regards the South China Sea, Japan has rejected a military response as inappropriate. Japan is not a claimant, and such an approach would further inflame tensions with China. Instead, much as it did in response to increasing piracy attacks in Southeast Asian waters in the early 2000s, Japan seeks to mitigate its security concerns by promoting multilateral cooperation, supplemented by bilateral support for individual ASEAN members. In doing so, Japan aims to preserve the existing maritime order in Asia. This has become a key theme in Japanese foreign policy, especially since the Abe government assumed office in December 2012. It is a theme that senior government officials have repeatedly stressed. In a major foreign policy speech on Southeast Asia in January, for instance, Abe outlined an eponymous doctrine composed of five principles, the second of which was a pledge to ensure that the maritime domain remained ‘governed by laws and rules, not might’. ⁷⁵ The ‘not might’ clause can be interpreted as a veiled criticism of China. A month later in Washington DC, the Prime Minister opined that Japan must ‘continue to be a guardian of the global commons, like the maritime commons, open enough to benefit everyone’. ⁷⁶ In May, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said that it was imperative to maintain the ‘existing order through the rule of law, rather than by force, and ensuring safe and free navigation are essential to regional peace and prosperity’. ⁷⁷ In June, at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Defense Minister Onodera stated that it was important for countries to comply with ‘maritime rules and norms’ and that Japan intended to play a ‘greater role in upholding the fundamental principles of freedom of navigation and to the adherence of maritime laws centered on UNCLOS’. ⁷⁸

Japan’s policy towards the South China Sea is composed of four interlinked strands. First, multilateralize or ‘internationalize’ the problem by raising it at ASEAN-led security forums. Second, enhance cooperation with ASEAN on maritime security issues, and promote unity within the organization over the South China Sea. Third, strengthen relations with individual ASEAN members and, in certain cases, provide capacity-building support. Fourth, increase policy coordination with the US and other external players.

Conclusion

Japan’s principal security interests in Southeast Asia are tied to sea lane security, on which the country’s economic security depends. Since Japan’s economic expansion in the 1960s, successive governments have invested considerable resources to enhance the safety and security of regional SLOCs. For much of the Cold War period, the Japanese government and private industry financed the installation and upkeep of navigational safety equipment in Southeast Asia’s strategic chokepoints, especially the Straits of Malacca. Post-Cold War, attention shifted to the threat posed by pirates and sea robbers. In order to address the threat, Japan stepped up capacity-building support for regional coast guards and provided leadership to encourage greater regional cooperation through information exchange. Japan’s support was a major factor in the downward trend in maritime violence in Southeast Asia in the second half of the 2000s.

While safety of navigation and piracy remain important issues for Tokyo, since the late 2000s, Japanese security analysts have expressed quiet, but growing, concern at rising tensions in the South China Sea over contested territorial and maritime boundary claims. While Japan is not a claimant, and does not take a position on the territorial claims, it has been perturbed by China’s more assertive behaviour and the potential for disruption to vital SLOCs. Equally important, Japan is concerned that should China prevail in its dispute with Southeast Asian countries, international legal norms will be undermined, and the country’s national interests in both the South China Sea and East China Sea would be harmed. In order to preserve the status quo, Japan is pursuing multiple strategies simultaneously: internationalizing the dispute at multilateral forums; encouraging ASEAN unity; providing capacity-building support to claimant countries, especially the Philippines; and coordinating its positions with the US.

At the official level, China has not reacted to Japan’s more proactive policy towards the South China Sea, though the state-run media has accused Tokyo of joining with Washington to ‘fish in troubled waters’ and asserted that the Japan–Philippines ‘axis’ is designed to ‘confront China’ and is ‘doomed to failure’. ¹¹³ Japan’s support for a multilateral solution to the dispute, as well as its attempts to ‘internationalize’ the problem at regional security forums, is clearly at odds with China’s own policy. But for Japan, the stakes are too high for it to be a mere bystander. Even as the two countries face off in the East China Sea, the South China Sea is likely to become an increasing point of contention in Sino-Japanese relations.