"Tokyo-Cambridge Gazette: Politico-Economic Commentaries" No.7(October 11, 2011)

　A rising and increasingly assertive China is posing a wide variety of challenges against the United States by changing the entire landscape of global political realities. A debt-stricken United States is currently under an extremely tight economic constraint despite its heavier responsibility to meet these challenges. For its part, Japan, amidst its domestic politico-economic chaos, has managed to maintain its amicable relations with the two countries--its most trustworthy ally, i.e., the United States, and its geographically closer and increasingly economically intertwined partner, i.e., China. This short essay provides a brief description about the little-known but 35-year uninterrupted history of confidence building measures (CBMs) between the Japanese and Chinese military forces. The essay also examines the changing circumstances surrounding the CBMs and their significance from the perspectives of the Japan-U.S. alliance and Asia-Pacific regional security....