China's Strategy in the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands Dispute: Issue Linkage and Coercive Diplomacy

Abstract

For almost four decades, China has disputed Japan's sovereignty of several small rocky islands in the East China Sea. Despite a June 2008 joint gas development agreement, China continues to claim sovereignty and the dispute is nowhere close to being resolved. This study proposes that China benefits from the endurance of the dispute because it can use territorial dispute threats to compel Japan to change its behavior or policy on other disputed issues. The results show that China gained concessions on other issues by using the territorial dispute as bargaining leverage in most of the 26 threats made between 1978 and 2008.