Findings and Implications

This chapter summarises the book’s core findings, offers comparative insights, and reflects on the broader implications of the study. It begins by reviewing the main empirical results, followed by a vertical, within-country comparison across three temporally distinct cases for both China and Japan, assessing the utility and consistency of the proposed framework in capturing shifts in state identity politics over time. The analysis then moves to a horizontal, cross-country comparison, evaluating the framework across the three paired case studies in the Asia-Pacific, Southeast Asia, and Northeast Asia. The chapter concludes by discussing the study’s limitations and outlining potential directions for future research. Overall, the findings underscore the value of the state identity politics approach in deepening our understanding of Sino-Japanese relations and East Asian regionalism, while also demonstrating its broader applicability within the field of international relations.