earticle

영어

In the wake of the intensifying Sino-Japanese rivalry in Asia, a new third-party market cooperation (TPMC) framework between the two countries emerged in late 2018. TPMC has been considered as a landmark event that signifies the resilience of the Sino-Japanese relation. It was initially proposed by China side, and it aims to facilitate business and industrial cooperation in developing countries between China and Japan. The new mechanism was inaugurated around the time of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to Beijing, signifying the resilience of Sino-Japanese relations. Despite of prevailing optimism among scholars in China and Japan, this paper raises skepticism towards the TPMC, as it remains at a concept stage and has not achieved tangible cooperation outcomes. Furthermore, this article presents a two-level analysis on the obstacles and challenges ahead. First, there appears to a asymmetry between the two governments in a way that Japan’s policy passiveness starkly contrasts with China’s proactive leadership taking. Second, this paper also sees the contradiction of business management models between the two countries’ enterprises. Chinese state-owned enterprises are abundant in capital, and can accommodate the demands of local governments in the third-party countries better than Japanese counterparts do. In contrast, Japanese enterprises are far more cautious and calculative in oversea investments, and are particularly careful in assessing the risks of infrastructure investments. For these two reasons, the bilateral agreements on the facilitation of TPMC in 2018 has not been materialized in the implementation stage. This study also endeavors to propose several policy recommendations for the future prospect of the TPMC.