China and the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands Dispute
This book examines the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute from a foreign policy perspective, focusing on three key stakeholders: China, Japan and the United States.
The Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute is a prominent territorial dispute between China and Japan. This book critically assesses the dispute in a pragmatic, policyoriented manner. The central question of the work focuses on the various military (direct invasion, coercion) and non-military (bilateral negotiations, binding and non-binding third-party options and delaying) foreign policy avenues available to China to pursue its key interests over the disputed islands. To compare and contrast these different options, the book employs a qualitative rational-choice framework. This allows for a critical analysis on the merits and demerits of various options and to anticipate Chinas potential course of action based on the principle that China is expected to act in a rational manner. This research offers two main contributions. First, it adopts a security-focused approach to complement the economic-focused works on the subject. Second, it critically examines the various foreign policy options as opposed to offering an avenue based on purely theoretical assumptions. While the work concludes that a delaying/status quo approach is rational for all parties involved, it highlights alternative policy avenues that can build on the conclusion of the rational-choice analysis. Through this it seeks to address the possibility of escalation and de-escalation on the East China Sea and highlights the critical role pro-active foreign policy making plays in averting a negative outcome of the dispute.
This book will be of much interest to students of Chinese Foreign Policy, Asian Politics, Security Studies and International Relations.
Balazs Szanto has a PhD in International and Strategic Studies from the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur.
Asian Security Studies
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China and the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands Dispute
Escalation and De-escalation
Balazs Szanto
First published 2018
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2018 Balazs Szanto
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Szanto, Balazs, author.
Title: China and the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands dispute : escalation and deescalation / Balazs Szanto.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. |
Series: Asian security studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017031187| ISBN 9781138095588 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315105635 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Senkaku Islands International status. | China Boundaries Japan. | Japan Boundaries China. | Boundary disputes. | Territory, National.
Classification: LCC KZ3881.S46 S93 2017 | DDC 341.4/2095229 dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017031187
ISBN: 978-1-138-09558-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-10563-5 (ebk)
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