PUBLICATIONS & REPORTS

Contents Introduction

China’s steady economic growth after the early 1990s increased domestic energy consumption and demand. This is a critical policy issue for China, as well as Japan that stands in a competitive position in securing energy resources. Moreover, economic growth and a resultant rise in energy demand in major East Asian countries have raised the commonality of states in Northeast and Southeast Asia as energy consumption nations. These nations have common interests in developing new energy sources, enhancing energy efficiency, and raising bargaining power against energy supply nations. Given the evolving conditions surrounding Sino-Japanese energy relations, this article examines the nuanced development of institutions to realise cooperation at the bilateral and regional levels by paying attention to the objective and approach of external policy that the Japanese and Chinese governments have adopted. The arguments that this article advances are two-fold. First, rapidly increasing energy demand in East Asia including China was perceived as a critical policy issue for the Japanese government, and the government took the lead in promoting institutions to tackle the issue at the regional and bilateral levels. Second, the development of the institutions has been conditioned by China’s reactions, and the Chinese government calculated how the institutions would contribute to its economic development and formulated its reaction to the institutions in pragmatic manners.