Energy Challenges in Asia Notes de l'Ifri, October 2007

Energy challenges represent one of the most important security paradigms in the Asia Pacific region where you have a mixture of growing energy dependency, fuelled by high economic growth, the emergence of new major players like China and India, and a quasi-complete absence of regional regulatory mechanisms to tackle the challenges in a multilateral way. These challenges mostly concern Japan and China, where crucial energy issues are aggravated by power rivalry, historical and ideological issues, and a lack of both economic and political harmony between them.
Neither countries are self sufficient in terms of energy needs. This can lead to a shared analysis and common approaches regarding Japan and China concerning this issue. Their cases are however very different and the solutions applied are related to different world views that are not reconcilable.
Both countries share common objectives: both want security and stable supply. But there are also big divergences and these divergences could be new sources of conflict and misunderstanding between Tokyo and Beijing.