Walking the Tightrope: Japan’s Policy Toward Xi Jinping’s China

China’s growing military brashness and aggressive posture under Xi Jinping have pushed Japan to make realignments to its China policy, attempting to strike a balance between security and economic interdependence. As a result, the term “hot economics, cold politics” (seirei keinetsu in Japanese; zhengleng jingre in Chinese), a phrase heard since the 1990s, has characterized relations between Asia’s two historical powerhouses. While Japan and China continue to be useful to each other economically, this has not helped remove — and arguably has exacerbated — the political differences between them. The pattern of divergence has been enduring and shows little sign of changing (Dreyer, 2014, p.