It is clear that the roles of and the relations between China and Japan are of special significance in forming peace and stability in the East Asian region. With this understanding, the two should work together to promote East Asian community building.
III China's Security Policy
Geographical location itself determines that both China's main interests and security concerns reside in the Asia-Pacific region, especially the East Asian region. China's security policy intends to achieve three goals: a peaceful and stable environment for reform and development; protecting its territorial integrity and sovereignty, which includes achieving eventual national reunification; and fulfilling its responsibility as a regional power and maintaining regional peace and stability.
To sustain China's economic development requires a peaceful and stable order. Thus, the central task for China's security policy is to maintain a peaceful environment. For the last 150 years (since the Opium War), China has enjoyed only a brief period of peaceful development. The last 20 or more years since the reforms have been the period in which it has had the best domestic and international environment. In this short period, China's GDP has quadrupled. However, China is still far from modernity. Therefore, it is a long-term strategy for China to be geared toward maintaining regional peace and stability.
The priority of maintaining regional peace and stability is of course, to maintain China's own stability and development. In regional structural adjustment and development, China is the variable. China's stability and development itself is one of the guarantors for regional security. As a developing country, China's main resources must concentrate on economic development and improving people's livelihoods. While it is necessary to enhance its military capacity as the economy grows, however, establishing a peaceful and stable regional environment should not be mainly dependent on military prowess. It is neither possible, nor necessary, to gain a balance of military power in the region. It is harmful for China to try to gain a "strategic balance" based on military power. China seems to know well how to avoid the former Soviet Union's losing strategy of over-relying on military strength to compete for supremacy.
For a long period of the past, China was repeatedly plundered and tortured by other powers. This heart-wrenching past has made a lasting impression on China's national psyche. So it is understandable why China takes sovereignty and territorial integrity as its foremost objectives for its national security policy. However, history has passed. China's future security will rest on its own capability as well as cooperation with other countries. China is a vast country with 14 immediate neighbors, plus over a dozen more not-too-distant neighbors. Disputes over borders and islands with some countries still exist and are not easily resolved. There is no possibility that China will give up its claim of sovereignty over these territories. However, it is unacceptable to endanger China's overall security by provoking large-scale conflicts over these disputes. Instead, it is important to limit the scale of possible conflicts and make concrete efforts to resolves the disputes peacefully through cooperation and negotiation.
The US does not belong to East Asia, but it is a key concern for China in its security policy.
