http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html
GLOBAL TRENDS 2025:
THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE COUNCIL'S
2025 PROJECT
日本について
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Japan: Caught Between the US and China.
Japan will face a major reorientation of its
domestic and foreign policies by 2025 yet
maintain its status as an upper middle rank
power. Domestically, Japan’s political,
social, and economic systems will likely be
restructured to address its demographic
decline, an aging industrial base, and a more
volatile political situation. Japan’s decreasing
population may force authorities to consider
new immigration policies like a long-term
visa option for visiting workers. The
Japanese, however, will have difficulty
overcoming their reluctance to naturalize
foreigners. The aging of the population also
will spur development in Japan’s healthcare
and housing systems to accommodate large
numbers of dependent elderly.
The shrinking work force—and Japan’s
cultural aversion to substantial immigrant
labor—will put a major strain on Japan’s
social services and tax revenues, leading to
tax increases and calls for more competition
in the domestic sector to lower the price of
consumer goods. We anticipate continued
restructuring of Japan’s export industries,
with increased emphasis on high technology
products, value-added production, and
information technologies. The shrinking of
Japan’s agricultural sector will continue,
perhaps down to just 2 percent of the labor
force, with a corresponding increase in
payments for food imports. The working-age
population, declining in absolute numbers,
includes a large number of unemployed and
untrained citizens in their late teens and 20s.
This could lead to a shortage of white collar
workers.
With increasing electoral competition, Japan’s
one-party political system probably will fully
disintegrate by 2025. The Liberal Democratic
Party may split into a number of contending
parties, but it is more likely that Japan will
witness a continual splitting and merging of
competing political parties, leading to policy
paralysis.
On the foreign front, Japan’s policies will be
influenced most by the policies of China and
the United States, where four scenarios are
possible.
In the first scenario, a China that
continues its current economic growth
pattern will be increasingly important to
Japan’s economic growth, and Tokyo will
work to maintain good political relations
and increase market access for Japanese
goods. Tokyo may seek a free trade
agreement with Beijing well before 2025.
At the same time, China’s military power
and influence in the region will be of
increasing concern to Japanese
policymakers. Their likely response will
be to draw closer to the United States,
increase their missile defense and anti-
submarine warfare capabilities, seek to
develop regional allies such as South
Korea, and push for greater development
of international multilateral organizations
in East Asia, including an East Asian
Summit.
In a second scenario, China’s economic
growth falters or its policies become
openly hostile toward countries in the
region. In response, Tokyo would likely
move to assert its influence, in part by
seeking to rally democratic states in East
Asia, and in part by continuing to develop
its own national power through advanced
military hardware. Tokyo would assume
strong support from Washington in this
circumstance and would move to shape
political and economic forums in the
region to isolate or limit Chinese
influence. This would cause states in the
region to make a difficult choice between
their continued unease with Japanese
military strength and a China that has the
potential to dominate nearly all nations
near its borders. As a result, Japan might
find itself dealing with an ad-hoc non-
aligned movement of East Asian states
seeking to avoid being entrapped by either
Tokyo or Beijing.
In a third scenario, should the United
States’ security commitment to Japan
weaken or be perceived by Tokyo as
weakening, Japan may decide to move
closer to Beijing on regional issues and
ultimately consider security arrangements
that give China a de facto role in
maintaining stability in ocean areas near
Japan. Tokyo is highly unlikely to
respond to a loss of the US security
umbrella by developing a nuclear
weapons program, short of clearly
aggressive intent by China toward Japan.
A fourth scenario would see the United
States and China move significantly
toward political and security cooperation
in the region, leading to US
accommodation of a Chinese military
presence in the region and a
corresponding realignment or drawdown
of US forces there. In this case, Tokyo
almost certainly would follow the
prevailing trend and move closer to
Beijing to be included in regional security
and political arrangements. Similarly,
others in the region, including South
Korea, Taiwan, and ASEAN members
likely would follow such a US lead,
putting further pressure on Tokyo to align
its policies with those of the other actors
in the region.
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By 2025, nation-states will no longer be
the only—and often not the most
important—actors on the world stage and
the “international system” will have
morphed to accommodate the new reality.
But the transformation will be incomplete
and uneven. Although states will not
disappear from the international scene, the
relative power of various nonstate
actors—including businesses, tribes,
religious organizations, and even criminal
networks—will grow as these groups
influence decisions on a widening range
of social, economic, and political issues. system.
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Traditional US allies, particularly Israel
and Japan, could come to feel less secure
in 2025 than they do today as a result of
emerging unfavorable demographic trends
within their respective countries, resource
scarcities, and more intensive military
competitions in the Middle East and East
Asia, especially if there is also doubt
about the vitality of US security
guarantees.
