The Rise of China and Japan’s New Security Strategy

UC Berkeley's Center for Chinese Studies hosts a talk with Narushige Michishita

Speaker/Performer: Narushige Michishita, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies

Sponsor: Center for Japanese Studies (CJS)

Japan's most important security policy goal is to create an environment under which China's rise will be peaceful and cooperative. In strategic terms, maintaining the balance of power in the region and creating crisis prevention and management mechanisms are the most effective means of achieving this.

To this end, Japan is taking three important steps. First, it is restructuring its defense establishment while seeking to create a crisis prevention mechanism with China. Second, it is reinforcing cooperation with the United States. Finally, it is strengthening partnership with Australia, ASEAN countries, and India.

Narushige Michishita is Japan Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Asia Program and simultaneously professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo. Previously, he served as senior research fellow at the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS), Ministry of Defense and assistant counsellor at the Cabinet Secretariat for Security and Crisis Management of the Government of Japan. A specialist in Japanese security and foreign policy as well as security issues on the Korean Peninsula, his works include North Korea's Military-Diplomatic Campaigns, 1966-2008 (Routledge, 2009). He is fluent in Japanese and Korean.