Do you agree that the growing assertiveness of China is leading to multilayered Indo-Japan relations? Comment. (2018, 15 Marks)
Since 2010 China has pressed both states on different fronts. Japan faced the Senkaku trawler collision and rare-earth curbs (2010), the nationalisation crisis (2012) and a unilateral air defence identification zone (2013); India faced Doklam (2017) and Galwan (2020). I largely agree that this pressure produced a multilayered partnership, but China accelerated a convergence it did not create.
The layers China’s assertiveness has thickened
- Security: the 2008 Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation, the ministerial 2+2 (2019), ACSA (2020), Japan’s permanent place in Malabar (2015), JAIMEX and Dharma Guardian. The UNICORN antenna agreement (July 2026) and the August 2026 maritime security arrangement extend it. Japanese grant aid for power supply in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands puts Japanese money on India’s eastern maritime frontier.
- Economic security: China’s rare-earth curbs on Japan in 2010 and its 2025 magnet export controls, which hurt Indian carmakers, show the same coercive tool fifteen years apart. The answer is the Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (2021, with Australia), the Economic Security Initiative (2025) and the July 2026 Joint Declaration on Economic Security Cooperation covering semiconductors, critical minerals and trusted digital infrastructure, as India excluded Chinese vendors from 5G.
- Connectivity: the 2017 principles of open, transparent and debt-sustainable infrastructure read as an unnamed critique of the Belt and Road Initiative; Japan is the leading foreign partner in North-East connectivity through the Act East Forum (2017).
- Third countries: in Bangladesh a Marubeni–Larsen & Toubro venture won the systems contract for Dhaka Metro Line 6 (2018), beside Japan’s Matarbari port; the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor vision extended the idea to Africa.
- Minilateral: Shinzo Abe’s “Confluence of the Two Seas” (2007), the US–Japan–India trilateral (2011) and the Quad, revived in 2017.
Why “China alone” overstates the case
- Roots before the pressure: yen loans since 1958, the 2000 Global Partnership and demographic complementarity would exist without Beijing.
- Convergent in direction, divergent in intensity: Japan’s ambassador opposed “unilateral attempts to change the status quo” on the LAC in July 2020, but Tokyo never took a position on the boundary. When Sanae Takaichi linked a Taiwan contingency to Japan’s survival in November 2025, New Delhi stayed silent and pursued its own thaw after Narendra Modi’s Tianjin visit.
- Scholarly limits: Rohan Mukherjee (2018) finds the outreach Tokyo-driven and sees strategic autonomy, buck-passing and Chinese economic leverage blocking any alliance; Rajesh Basrur and Sumitha Narayanan Kutty (2021) judge the Modi-era change modest, nested within strategic autonomy.
- Security dilemma: Beijing reads the layering as encirclement, which feeds the behaviour the layering answers.
Conclusion
China’s assertiveness explains the pace and security content of the layering, not its existence. The relationship is multilayered but stops short of alliance: India uses Japan for external balancing while keeping its strategic autonomy and managing Beijing on its own terms.