As the process of counter-globalization accelerates and the great powers return to regional competition, competitive regionalism has become a common phenomenon in the international community, mostly manifesting itself in the basic dynamics of competition in key regions under the domination of nation-states, using regionalism with the will of the state as a tool and the regional system as a vehicle. The game of extra-territorial powers around the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region has always been intense, and Japan, as an important extra-territorial stakeholder in the region, has demonstrated its CEE competitivity with the goal of cooperating with Europe and the United States, and confronting non-Western powers such as China and Russia, and has demonstrated the application of a variety of logics and strategies such as the balance of power, systemic checks and balances, and normative competition. Among them, the Visegrad Group is the most influential and dynamic sub-regional cooperation organization in the CEE region, and focusing on the history of the evolution of Japan's sub-regional strategy towards this group from the perspective of competitive regionalism can deepen the understanding of Japan's CEE regional strategy. At present, with the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis in 2022 and the accelerated geopolitical turbulence in CEE, Japan's CEE regional strategy has shown new features of politicization of regional cooperation issues, obvious frameworks of “China-CEE cooperation,” and heated ideological and conceptual competition.

crisis in Ukraine;competitive regionalism;Japan's Regional Strategy for Ceutral and Eastern Europe;Sino-Japan relations