China and Japan should cooperate on the New Silk Road

China’s Belt and Road initiative and Japan’s earlier ‘Silk Road Diplomacy’ as well as its renewed diplomacy in Central Asia run in parallel. Despite their competition for infrastructure projects and energy resources, China and Japan share a similar economic outlook for Central Asia but have different levels of strategic ambitions. In the economic arena, China and Japan have adopted a different approach to development cooperation from that of traditional Western aid donors, and they offered recipient countries an alternative development model. In the strategic arena, stability and security in Central Asia are important to both China and Japan, but while Japan is a low-profile supporter of integration and independence of Central Asian countries, China is actively engaging in security cooperation and seeking influence in the region. In a new book chapter ‘The New Silk Road for China and Japan: Building on Shared Legacies’, Yang Jiang argues that those conditions are conducive to Sino-Japanese cooperation in development projects in Central Asia. (in Rethinking the Silk Road: China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Emerging Eurasian Relations, edited by Maximilian Mayer, pp.131-146. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan 2017).