James Manicom has written a book on a common theme with an original angle. He sets out to demonstrate that the widespread focus on Sino-Japanese tensions over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands overlooks the extent to which cooperation has marked Sino-Japanese maritime relations, with a view to pointing out how these cooperative aspects can be put back on track. To substantiate the claim that Sino-Japanese maritime relations have been marked by significant elements of cooperation, Manicom analyses five cases of cooperation in four issue areas in the East China Sea: sovereignty disputes, fisheries management, marine research and hydrocarbon resource development.
The findings suggest that Beijing and Tokyo have been able to cooperate on contested jurisdiction when material issues have been separated from the more symbolic aspects of the relationship. A cooperative process, that seeks to remove or sidestep issue areas that are the source of tension, is the recipe for successfully managing tensions. In practice, this process entails separating symbolic functions of disputed space from purely material objectives, since cooperation is easier to achieve over material aspects. Strategic concerns constitute the highest barriers to cooperation. According to Manicom, China has contributed more towards cooperation than Japan because it has perceived Japan as more willing to escalate. By contrast, Japan has been more proactive in pursuing a posture that enhances tension. Explanations of the Sino-Japanese maritime relationship and the recurrence of cooperation in this area are not found through linking resources, nationalism or strategic value to the behaviour of the two neighbours. Instead, Manicom relies on assessments of how policymakers perceive the salience of the maritime neighbourhood and how it encourages them to achieve objectives that involve cooperation on material aspects in contested maritime space and manage nationalist domestic pressures. He concludes that China and Japan are quite capable of managing the tensions that arise from their contested sovereignty and jurisdiction in the East China Sea. However, both Beijing and Japan are reluctant to pursue deeper, binding cooperation.
The vast majority of literature addressing the issue of Sino-Japanese maritime relations in the East China Sea focuses on the prospects of conflict. Manicom is to be commended for parting company with this trend by setting out to identify patterns of cooperation. He has many interesting findings, not least from a policymaker's perspective. For example, he points out that Sino-Japanese cooperation on resource development has addressed the acute issues involved and has left the underlying sovereignty and delimitation issues unresolved. This way of going about cooperation is closely in line with Beijing's long-standing policy of recommending joint development on the basis of shelving sovereignty and delimitation issues. However, in making this effort Manicom runs the risk of giving a distorted view of the patterns of interaction. A key assumption of the book is that in the case of China, there is no way of knowing if cooperation is in fact delay. Consequently, cooperation must be taken at face value (p. 22). However, delay is central to the interpretation of numerous analyses of China's behaviour towards Japan in the East China Sea, depicting Beijing's strategy as appeasement combined with creeping advancement of China's presence in the area. Rather than merely dismissing these explanations, Manicom's analysis would have appeared more convincing if he had tried to demonstrate that they do not sit well with existing Sino-Japanese patterns of interaction. This could have been done by investigating whether cooperation has different policy consequences from those predicted by delay hypotheses, focusing on cases where Sino-Japanese cooperation has taken a form that cannot be interpreted as delay. For example, as part of the anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden, Beijing and Tokyo have cooperated on adopting unilateral approaches to anti-piracy that differ from the multilateral approaches adopted by NATO.
Another problem is that the theoretical framework is designed to identify cooperation where none exists. One example of this inherent bias towards cooperation is that threats and demonstrations issued by China and Japan towards each other are not seen as elements contributing to escalation. Instead, they are considered coercive cooperation, used to signal red lines in an ongoing process of territorial bargaining over disputed space. This assumption seems problematic in view of events such as the Chinese declaration of an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) that encompassed the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. Irrespective of whether this move is blamed on Japanese or Chinese actions, it doubled the competitive patrolling of the area in the vicinity of the disputed islands to encompass the airspace as well as the surrounding seas. This event seems to contribute to escalation because China's red line was immediately challenged by Japan and the United States, thus increasing the likelihood of collision. Of course one could also argue that this type of behaviour made both parties realize that some kind of dialogue must be opened. Even if one does present a case for cooperation, it is not clear that the establishment of the ADIZ was intended to lead to cooperation. Another problematic assumption that gives rise to bias towards identifying cooperation in the case studies is the assertion that resource issues are of marginal political salience because they relate to mundane economic concerns and not to matters of national security or national identity. It is easy to think of conflicts over resources such as oil and gas that have become highly politically salient. For example, Iraq's intervention in Kuwait in 1990 and the Western response were in many ways driven by the political salience of resource concerns and conflicts. And strategic issues between adversaries can give rise to deep inter-state cooperation: Chinese–South Korean cooperation on North Korean issues is perhaps a case in point.
These theoretical concerns do not change the general impression that Manicom has written a well-documented and theoretically and empirically innovative book on one of the most important issues in contemporary Asia-Pacific security. The book should appeal to a wide scholarly and policy-oriented audience that is interested in an original take on Sino-Japanese relations and the East China Sea. The book is also useful for postgraduate courses discussing Asia-Pacific and maritime security issues.
