Environmental Politics and Foreign Policy in East Asia: A Survey of China and Japan

　

Paul G Harris

　

Abstract

　

        Our case studies begin with Paul G Harris’s survey of actors and forces affecting the environmental foreign policies of China and Japan. Chapter 2 describes some of the domestic environmental problems and transnational environmental issues of concern to each country; domestic policy processes related to environmental regulation; variables more obviously associated with foreign policy; and each country’s record of international environmental diplomacy. He also introduces some theoretical approaches that can focus our attention on key variables. What Harris finds is that interesting and sometimes overlooked variables can be profoundly important. For example, China’s historical near obsession with sovereignty and Japan’s sometime obsession with being viewed as a major power shape their environmental foreign policies every bit as much as other factors. Indeed, the bilateral environmental relationship between these two countries remains deeply influenced by forces seemingly unrelated to the environment, in particular their 20th-century wartime history.