The petroleum factor in Sino-Japanese relations: beyond energy cooperation

China and Japan used to have good energy cooperation beforeChina switched into a net oil importer in the mid-1990s, butthe recent years have witnessed an increasingly intensive competitionbetween the two countries over petroleum supplies. While manysaw such competition as inevitable with China's growing energydemands, the paper argues that the energy relationship betweenthe two countries was never separated from political and strategicconcerns, and heavily affected by the concern of ‘relativegains’, as suggested by the neorealists. Like the caseprior to the mid-1990s when the non-energy factors underpinnedthe Sino–Japanese energy cooperation, the key factorsthat prevented the two from continuing energy cooperation todayalso lay in political and strategic aspects. Being two regionalpowers in East Asia, China, and Japan need to recognize thefact that their lack of energy cooperation due to mutual politicaldistrust will not only impair their own energy security, butmay also have negative implications on regional stability.