Racialised Threat Perception within International Society: From Japan to China

Abstract This article takes a comparative approach that looks at the rise of Japan and China during their ascendency and challenge to the hegemonic state within the international system, and the subsequent racial threat perception that both countries experienced. Engaging the English School of International Relations, it focuses particularly on the legacies of differentiation within international society. It contends that, given the English School’s emphasis on the concept of international society that likens that relationship among states to a social one, it is fruitful to examine how social differentiation occurs within a domestic setting and to use that finding as analogous to international society. The article argues that racialised threat perception towards Japan and China heightened in tandem with their successive rises due to the challenges the two countries posed to the status and privileges of the dominant country—the USA—and which coincided with a US economic downturn and domestic crisis. This racially sensitive approach can provide at least one lens through which to understand the racial threat perception and contemporary relational dynamics between the two great powers: the USA versus the People’s Republic of China.