| ID | 160949 |
| Title Proper | Not-so-new silk roads |
| Other Title Information | Japan;s foreign policies on Asian connectivity infrastructure under the radar |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Murashkin, Nikolay |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | Scholarly narratives concerning China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) tend to contextualise this project within China's rivalry with the United States and Japan. Such interpretations often reduce and misconstrue Japan's initiatives in Asian infrastructure finance as mere reactivity to China's advances. This paper will showcase Japan's own foreign and financial policies regarding infrastructure in Asia and the New Silk Road regions since the end of the Cold War. I argue that Japan's presence in that field is underappreciated and under-researched, as Japan's infrastructural footprint in the New Silk Road significantly pre-dates the BRI. Furthermore, I stress the fact that Japan's foreign policy in Asian infrastructure finance featured important cooperative postures toward China, especially within multilateral development banks. The paper makes a contribution to emerging scholarship on the BRI—often reliant on strategic communications and projections—by highlighting Japan's role in regional infrastructure to show how our understanding of international relations and international political economy in Asia can be better informed by economic history and area studies. |
| `In' analytical Note | Australian Journal of International Affairs Vol. 72, No.5; October 2018: p.455-472 |
| Journal Source | Australian Journal of International Affairs Vol: 72 No 5 |
| Key Words | Japan ; Asia ; Japan - Foreign Policy ; Statecraft ; Japanese Foreign Policy ; New Silk Road ; Belt and Road Initiative ; BRI ; Connectivity Infrastructure |