On November 20 last year, Chinese leaders publicly expressed China’s willingness to actively consider joining the Comprehensive Progress Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Subsequently, the Japanese Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide released a "group owner" of the CPTPP. "Ambiguous" signal, declares that when Japan assumes the rotating chairmanship of the CPTPP this year, it will work hard to lead the organization to achieve expansion. Although Yoshihide Suga did not specify the expansion country in his statement at the time, the outside world generally believed that he was expressing his willingness to welcome China to join the CPTPP.
However, on January 4 this year, Yoshihide Suga’s attitude towards expanding CPTPP suddenly reversed. In an interview, he said that although China has expressed active consideration of joining CPTPP, the organization requires member states to have a fairly high level of market opening. Therefore, it is considered difficult for China to join the CPTPP. The Japanese media believed that Yoshihide Suga's remarks were tantamount to "declining" China's willingness to join the CPTPP, and also used a reason why Western countries generally did not approve of China's economic development.
Actually, Japan's sudden turn of face over China's accession to the CPTPP was completely unexpected. The main reason lies in three aspects: domestic reality, external influences and special reasons. First of all, Suga Yoshihide succeeded Shinzo Abe and as the prime minister of Japan. He is sure to undertake the transitional task, that is, the “black pot” of poor epidemic prevention and the cancellation of the Olympics during his tenure, so that the principal Shinzo Abe will return unaffected in September next year. Therefore, Yoshihide Suga has almost no right to make decisions on major international issues, and most of the time he has to be constrained.
Secondly, the external influence comes more from the United States. After all, the predecessor of CPTPP, TPP, is a "group" hand-held by former US President Obama . Naturally, Japan looks forward to the return of the US government after the change of term. In addition, if not surprisingly, the next president of the United States is Obama’s deputy Biden , which means that the possibility of the United States returning to CPTPP is very high. Japan needs to wait for Biden to come to power and make a decision before considering CPTPP. Expansion issues.
More importantly, the current special circumstances cannot tolerate Japan's continued "riding the fence" between China and the United States to play a balance. You must know that Shinzo Abe, the master behind Yoshihide Suga, has fallen into the "cherry blossom viewing party" storm. Once dealt with Inadvertently his "Shinzo" road will not only be in vain, but also may face serious prison disaster. Therefore, for the sake of future official career, Abe had to choose to arrange Yoshihide Suga to manipulate the "cherry blossom viewing society" behind the storm. Compromise of forces.
In fact, in addition to the above three main reasons, Japan’s refusal to join the CPTPP may also include some unwillingness, especially the global new crown pandemic in 2020 has highlighted the gap between China and Japan, which makes Japan even more I am jealous and fearful of China, a strong neighbor, or that Japan has realized that it will only serve as a foil for revolving around China in the future, so some strange signs have appeared under the complicated mood, that is, it wants to move closer to China, but not Ken gave up the illusion of "containing China" in the US.
In fact, no matter whether Japan wants to clearly choose a side between China and the United States, the time left for it is running out. On the one hand, it is an unstoppable fact that China is rejuvenating and the United States is slipping into decline. On the other hand, Japan’s national power The downward trend has caused it to gradually lose its bargaining power among major powers. That is to say, no matter how Japan chooses between China and the United States, it will be difficult to escape the fate of being caught between the major powers unless Japan can be between China and the United States. Be absolutely neutral.
Of course, how Japan will choose between China, the United States and neutrality is not something that China can decide, but China can decide to continue to expand its international influence by enhancing its own strength. In short, if China has a sufficiently strong comprehensive national power, then what does it matter whether to join the CPTPP?
