themes for major recipient nations, enabling assistance to be implemented effectively in accordance with each nation’s different needs. Country assistance programs for Cambodia, China, and Malaysia were compiled and published in fiscal year 2001. Given Japan’s severe economic and fiscal situation of recent years, Japan’s ODA to China has faced strong domestic criticism due to China’s massive military expenditures and concerns about the protection of basic human rights—especially in relation to the ODA Charter—as well as China’s provision of assistance to other countries and the lack of public recognition in China of Japan’s assistance. There has also been considerable debate within Japan on the proper direction of ODA to China in the light of changing development challenges arising from China’s economic expansion. In December 2000 the Economic Co-operation Evaluation Subcommittee of the Liberal Democratic Party’s Special Committee on External Economic Cooperation issued the “Summary of and Guidelines for Economic Assistance to China.” Recommendations were also issued by “the Advisory Group on Japan’s Economic Assistance to China in the 21st Century”—an advisory body to the director general of the Foreign Ministry’s Economic Co-operation Bureau chaired by former Economic Planning Agency Director General Isamu Miyazaki and staffed by representatives from the business sector, academia, the media, and NGOs.

Amid these discussions in Japan, in October 2001 the Japanese government, based on its own findings, compiled and published the Economic Cooperation Program for China to serve as a basic set of guidelines for future aid to China. $ ^{20} $ In view of the circumstances surrounding the provision of ODA to China, the program points to a new direction, defining the significance of economic cooperation to China in the following way: “In order to maintain and strengthen the security and prosperity of Japan, the maintenance of a peaceful international environment is essential, and more than anything else, the stability and prosperity in the East Asian region in which Japan is located is indispensable. . . . It is desirable from Japan’s perspective to have a more open and more stable society in China that is willing and able to fulfill its responsibilities as a member of the international community. Japan should work towards deepening China’s involvement and participation in the international community, and support Chinese efforts in these directions.”

As the improvement of economic infrastructure in coastal areas can basically be dealt with by China itself, high-priority areas and issues for Japan’s ODA in the coming years include environmental conservation—particularly cross-border problems like acid rain and the “yellow sand” fallout from sand storms that have a major impact on Japan—and measures to raise the living standards of impoverished people in China’s interior and to promote stability, social development, and the cultivation of human resources. Japan will not take as a given past levels of assistance but will calculate its contributions using a “project-accumulation formula” implemented in accordance with a detailed review of each project, focusing on pri-