Japanese-Chinese “Cold Politics, Hot Economy”:
Fitting Sectors into China’s Ecosystem
Tatsuya Nagata, PhD student, Rutgers University-Newark
Abstract
The recent Japanese-Chinese relationship is characterized as “cold politics, hot economy” and
there are two schools of thoughts which describe this bilateral relationship as friendly or hostile. But such
a friend/enemy dichotomy to humanize the two countries is not useful to understand it. A sectoral
approach can offer the better understanding of China as a sectorally fragmented system with limited
carrying capacity and the complex Japanese-Chinese bilateral relations. In this view, China has a
problem in fitting its sectoral imperatives to its limited ecosystem and Japan’s involvement in it has
unintended and unwanted consequences. Japan should be more interested in managing negative
consequences of its short-sighted involvement in China’s complex system.
Introduction
The recent development of the Japanese-Chinese relationship is characterized as “cold
politics, hot economy (seirei keinetsu)” in Japan, which means the coexistence of the