Analysis On China-Japan-ROK Negotiation From The Perspective Of Coordination Game

On November20th2012, when they held a meeting during the East Asia Summit,the Economic and Trade Ministers from China, Japan and South Korea announced thatChina-Japan-ROK FTA negotiation would be officially launched. Under thecircumstance that the political relationship either between China and Japan or betweenSouth Korea and Japan was at a deadlock, the start-up of China-Japan-ROK FTAnegotiation had significant strategic meaning and made all sectors look forward to thepromoting of the negotiation. However, the construction of China-Japan-ROK FTAdidn’t run smoothly when it came to the stage that the actors started to negotiate aboutthe agreement in the concrete. China, Japan and South Korea who are in unstablepolitical relationship have long held the diplomatic logic which can be called “politicsand economics separating and promoting politics through economics” in thecooperation. But the inertial cooperative logic sunk into serious interpretation dilemma,facing the fact that the proceeding of the FTA negotiation has been hard to promote.The fact mentioned before generates two related problems aboutChina-Japan-ROK FTA negotiation: firstly, why it is hard to make substantiveachievement while China-Japan-ROK FTA negotiation could be launched under thesevere political situation? Secondly, what is the vital problem of China-Japan-ROK FTAnegotiation and what is the possible route to promote the process of the negotiation inthe future? This thesis uses coordination game model as analytical framework,combining international theories of absolute gains and relative gains in order to graspthe game logic of China-Japan-ROK FTA negotiation, to explain the reason why thethree countries showed different attitude and made different strategic choices in the twodifferent stages and to probe into the possible route to promote the process of thenegotiation. The body is divided into four parts in addition to Introduction andConclusion.The first part, the characteristics of coordination game and the logic ofChina-Japan-ROK FTA negotiation. It is the characteristic of coordination game thatthere are more than one Nash equilibrium results to the whole, while different actorswho participate in the game have different preferences about these results, and moreover,the result of cooperation is always better than betrayal. The co-existence of cooperativeprospect shaped by inner impetus as well as external pressure and the problem of income distribution caused by the differences of industrial structure constitutes thecoordination game logic of China-Japan-ROK FTA negotiation. Therefore,China-Japan-ROK FTA negotiation can be abstracted as a coordination game model.The second part, absolute gains and relative gains in coordination game. Incoordination game, the actors who participate in the game confront the problem ofabsolute gains as well as the problem of relative gains. The actors’ attention aboutabsolute gains is the foundation of cooperation and the degree of the attention aboutrelative gains is the key point of the possibility of the cooperation. The degree of theactors’attention about relative gains is not prior, but is influenced by the factors such asaffairs, the number of actors, the power structure of the related countries and thepolitical relationship of the countries.The third part, coordination game analysis on the China-Japan-ROK negotiation.According to the coordination game model, it is clear that absolute gains is the focus ofthe three countries in the start stage, therefore the establishment of the FTA is theoptimal strategy, which is win-win. Nevertheless, when entering the stage of the specificagreement negotiations, the relative proceeds of the three countries become the majorproblem, and the worsening of relationship between Japan and South Korea, as well asChina, prompting the attention about relative gains, making the FTA negotiationsdifficult to promote.The forth part, the probable path to promote China-Japan-ROK FTA negotiation. Inprinciple, calculating the equilibrium results of the cooperative game, providingmandatory leadership and shaping non-mandatory leadership are all the projects to solvethe problem of income distribution in coordination game. However, to the specificproblem, which is China-Japan-ROK FTA negotiation, equilibrium leadership which isnon-mandatory is the possible route. The three countries, China, Japan and South Korea,can promote the process of the negotiation by protocolling the agenda for thenegotiation and shaping the identity of common interests based on non-mandatoryleadership.