A crucial conundrum in modern international relations is Japan's rapid militarisation of space: how can a country with a pacifist constitution acquire military space capabilities while upholding overtly anti-militarist technonationalist narratives? As a case study in the development of national identity through technology and discourse, this paper examines Japan's space program, specifically the Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS), the H-3 rocket, and the constitutional constraints while creating an increasingly apparent credibility gap with regional partners, especially China and emerging regional powers, based on constructivist and structural realist theoretical frameworks. Through an examination of policy papers, strategic declarations, and regional reactions, the increasing military integration that weakens, rather than strengthens, geopolitical power in the Indo-Pacific. The inherent contradiction between constructivist identity narratives and realist security calculations is what causes the credibility gap, rather than hypocrisy per se. This thesis has significant implications for the future of space security governance in the Indo-Pacific, alliance management and regional stability.
This study examines the environmental consequences of Chinese development finance. Despite the growing volume of studies on the economic and political determinants of Chinese aid, relatively little attention has been paid to its environmental consequences. Given that Chinese development finance typically lacks the strict environmental conditionality characteristic of Western aid, we argue that the recipient's domestic political institutions-specifically the level of democracy-serve as the primary filter determining the environmental sustainability of these projects. Using cross-national panel data covering 118 developing countries from 2001 to 2022, we show that Chinese development finance does not exert a uniform effect on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across all recipient countries. Rather, its association with higher emissions is concentrated primarily in authoritarian contexts, where institutional checks on environmentally harmful projects are weaker. In democratic regimes, by contrast, such adverse environmental effects are substantially mitigated. These findings underscore the conditional nature of Chinese aid's environmental impact and highlight the importance of domestic political institutions in shaping whether external finance contributes to environmental degradation.
This study analyzes how the Qing Empire reconfigured diplomatic hierarchy in East Asia in the late nineteenth century through its treaty-making practices. Focusing on Qing-Japan and Qing-Choson relations after the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Amity (1871) and the Regulations for Maritime and Overland Trade Between Chinese and Corean (1882), it explores how the Qing court redefined its regional authority by employing the language and format of modern international treaties while maintaining the traditional logic of suzerainty. By analyzing memorials, diplomatic correspondence, and treaty texts in Chinese, Choson (Korean), and Japanese, the article demonstrates a strategic transformation in Qing officials' approach to external relations and regional geopolitics in East Asia, within a new framework shaped by Western international law. The article argues that Qing diplomacy was structured around a deliberate strategy of institutional differentiation, in which modern diplomatic forms were selectively adopted to reinforce, rather than transform, existing hierarchical relations. While the Treaty of Amity with Japan nominally presupposed sovereign equality, its internal provisions - including asymmetrical official designations and non-transferable privileges - embedded Qing hierarchical assumptions within a formally modern framework. In contrast, the Trade Regulations with Choson explicitly codified suzerainty, granting Qing commercial commissioners extensive judicial and administrative authority that far exceeded the reciprocal standards of Western treaty practice. Ultimately, this study suggests that late Qing treaty diplomacy was not merely a passive response to Western imperialism, but an active and strategic reconfiguration of regional hierarchy under modern institutional conditions. This study thus illuminates how non-Western polities navigated the tension between hierarchical authority and sovereign forms in the making of the modern international order.
