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This paper examines China's changing perspectives on the evolving U.S.-Japan alliance from both the hard and soft power angles. Four sets of considerations affect how Beijing views the alliance. The first has to do with the alliance's scope and missions. While Beijing tacitly acknowledges the alliance's role in preventing Japanese re-militarization, it now sees it as an instrument for sustaining U.S. hegemony in the region beyond its original, limited missions of defending Japan. Second, China considers the U.S.-Japan alliance increasingly as a convenient cover for Tokyo to pursue ~ normal state ~ status, including the strengthening of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) and the dispatch of JSDF personnel overseas. A politically ambitious, militarily assertive, and economically strong Japan poses a serious challenge for China and for the region given the historical past and ongoing territorial disputes between Japan and its neighbors. Third, Beijing has serious concerns about the alliance's potential interference in what it considers as its domestic affairs, namely, the Taiwan issue. Finally, Chinese perspectives on the U.S.-Japan alliance must also be put in the broad contexts of the evolving and complex Sino-U.S. and Sino-Japanese relations. Stable and better relationships could mitigate the potentially negative impact of the alliance on China while tension and deterioration of ties heighten Beijing's concerns and worse-case assessments. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT #1Japan's Post-Mahanian Maritime StrategyThis paper will assess the dynamics of maritime security in Northeast Asia using the theories of Alfred Thayer Mahan, the U.S. naval officer who, writing around the turn of the nineteenth century, contended that "sea power" was founded on the "three pillars" of international commerce, naval stations scattered along the sea lanes to support the operations of fuel-thirsty warships, and, most importantly for him, a powerful battle fleet. Mahan's works exhibited a strong geographical hue, urging the United States to build a fleet capable of defending the Caribbean sea lanes against the largest concentration of naval forces likely to be hurled against it. Only by securing the Caribbean basin, its "Mediterranean," declared Mahan, could the United States dig an isthmian canal and wrest away its rightful share of the Asia trade.We have unearthed considerable evidence suggesting that China will pursue a Mahanian maritime strategy as its diplomatic, economic, and military power waxes. Influential Chinese strategists talk of "absolute control" over China's littoral waters, through which the shipments of raw materials upon which the nation's economic growth has come to depend must pass. In so doing, they routinely invoke Mahan's writings. If indeed Beijing follows Mahan's path to sea power, it will regard the Yellow, East China, and South China seas much as Mahan regarded the Caribbean: as an expanse in which naval dominance is vital to national prosperity.If so, an increasingly assertive Chinese maritime strategy will intersect with that of Japan, which has been rethinking its own approach to the uses of sea power, in large part because it relies on the same sea lanes for its own imports of oil, gas, and other commodities. Whether Tokyo would entrust the safety of its seaborne commerce to a China jealous of its "Caribbean" is an open question. Also problematic for Sino-Japanese relations are conflicting claims to islands whose adjacent sea beds purportedly contain major oil and gas reserves.Yet few, if any, Japanese strategists look to Alfred Thayer Mahan for guidance. They do not quote Mahan; nor do they urge Tokyo to found its maritime strategy on Mahanian precepts or some distinctively Japanese derivative thereof. Why is that so? Was Mahan discredited by association with the Japanese militarism of the 1930s and 1940s? Was he simply forgotten during the postwar years, when large segments of the Japanese populace looked with revulsion on the use of military force? Upon what maritime theories will Tokyo base its emerging naval strategy, if not those of Mahan? With what effect?By venturing some answers to these questions, the study will show how Japanese strategy may evolve over the next decade and how the strategies deployed by Tokyo and Beijing may interact. Our findings and recommendations will be of immediate use to policymakers in Tokyo, as well as to policymakers and alliance managers in Washington, which, if recent events are any guide, will depend increasingly on the U.S.-Japanese alliance to sustain its East Asia strategy in the coming years. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Pax Americana II, the period after the Cold War, and the strategic choices of Japan. It states that the transformation of the international system from bipolar to unipolar results in a more assertive U.S. policy. It cites the decision of the U.S. government to restore its alliance with Japan and initiate talks with China to prevent the financial market crisis. It offers an overview of the defense policy of the Japanese government.