冲击与转型：2021～2022年度日本形势

Abstract:In 2021，as the COVID-19 epidemic continued in global range，and Japan’s economy and society were hit by multiple waves of epidemics. The Yoshihide Suga administration，which took office as the “epidemic prevention cabinet”，failed to balance epidemic prevention with economic recovery，and ended within just one year under the pressure of young and middle-aged congressmen of the Liberal Democratic Party （LDP）. The successor cabinet of Fumio Kishida，in addition to promoting COVID-19 measures and the reform of LDP，focuses on the concept of “new capitalism” and plans to adjust the “Abenomics” to reach a balance between economic growth and fair distribution. After a sharp recession in 2020，the Japanese economy continued to recover under the support of ultra-loose monetary policy，however，the momentum was obviously insufficient，with Japan’s real GDP growth of 1.7% for the whole year. In 2021，Japan’s foreign strategy continued to slide along the track of “the Abe line” and came to influence its concept of national security，and committed to building various types of security cooperation. However，the unbalancing neighboring relations of Japan with the Northeast Asian countries and Southeast Asian countries and its diplomatic weakness remained unsolved. Following the trend of the previous year，the China-Japan relations continued to experience fluctuation in 2021. Japan has actively intervened in the Taiwan Straits issue and the South China Sea dispute and strengthened the “Indo-Pacific Vision” to counterbalance China，and the conflict in the East China Sea and the strategic suspicion between China and Japan intensifies. Since Kishida took office，with the effort from top leaders of the two countries，the positive factors of China-Japan relations have increased，however，the structural contradictions and political and security differences between the two sides remain difficult to resolve in the short term. Moreover，as Japan continues to push forward its economic and security policies，China-Japan economic and trade cooperation will also face challenges. In 2022，due to the current international situation and Japan’s domestic politics，the China-Japan relations will continue to present great instability and uncertainty.

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