Strategic Priorities, Trends and Prospects of Japan's Participation in Economic Integration in the APAC

The article is dedicated to studying the topical trends, challenges and priorities characterizing Japan’s involvement in the regional economic integration projects. Economic cooperation with the rapidly developing Asian economies is imperative for Japan, which faces economic and demographic problems. Japan participates in the region’s two largest integration projects (RCEP and CPTPP) with different objectives: while participation in RCEP, which is larger and promises more potential for economic growth, is motivated principally by economic reasons, through CPTPP Japan is able to coordinate its foreign policy with the like-minded countries. Japan’s foreign strategy thus faces the need to strike proper balance between the economic and the political goals, which on the conceptual level amounts to choosing between (or combining) the ‘Asian’ and the ‘universal’ values and identity. However, since Prime Minister Kishida assumed office, there has been an evident predominance of the ‘universal’ values in the strategic documents, and the country’s new economic security strategy gives the government exceptional authority to interfere in the national economy to counter the states that do not ‘share universal values’. We argue, however, that dilemma between the ‘Asian’ and the ‘universal’ values is not unsolvable on the conceptual level.