Barely a month in office, Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi finds herself in a bitter standoff with China.
The cause is Taiwan, a self-governing island that China calls a renegade province, to be returned by force if necessary. It was also Japan’s first colony.
Responding to a parliamentary question on November 7th, Takaichi said that a military attack on Taiwan could be a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan and might trigger its own military response.
China’s reaction has been calculated but predictably vitriolic. Beijing’s consul general to Osaka, Japan’s second-largest city, posted a now deleted online threat to “cut off” Takaichi’s “dirty neck”.
READ MORE
Japanese tour operators report an 80 per cent drop in tourist bookings from China. Japan has warned its own citizens to be careful about travelling there. Hundreds of cultural events have been suspended or cancelled.
Armed China coast guard vessels have been dispatched off an island chain disputed by both sides, and a Chinese military drone was spotted over the island of Yonaguni, Japan’s closest point to Taiwan.
On Sunday, Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, demanded Takaichi retract her remarks, saying threats of military intervention on Taiwan had crossed a red line. But the political cost to Takaichi of backing down from what her supporters see as Chinese bullying would be prohibitive.
Takaichi was citing a legal principle established in 2015, that Japan is authorised to dispatch its Self-Defence Forces (SDF) during an armed attack against a foreign country that is in a close relationship with Japan.
If US military forces were, for example, trying to break a Chinese naval blockade of Taiwan, the SDF could be sent to help.
Discussion has raged since on whether such a scenario actually threatens Japan’s survival. Takaichi’s predecessor, Shigeru Ishiba, has accused the prime minister of grandstanding, and said she had come “very close to claiming that a Taiwan contingency is a Japan contingency”.
For years, China has threatened, cajoled and squeezed democratic Taiwan in an attempt to force it to fold without a costly war across the Taiwan Strait. Japan has mostly toed the US line of “strategic ambiguity”, rarely speaking out and officially saying that the dispute can be resolved through dialogue.
As China’s economic and military heft has expanded, however, the Japanese political right has become less tight-lipped. In 2021, then deputy prime minister Taro Aso said unambiguously that Japan would have to “defend Taiwan” alongside US forces if China invaded.
Such interventions challenge China, which has built its modern identity on its recovery from the humiliation of being carved up by foreign powers in the 19th and 20th centuries. Taiwan is especially symbolic to the Communist Party because in addition to being home to the losing Nationalist side that fled China’s civil war, it was ruled by Japan from 1895 to 1945.
It doesn’t help that both Takaichi and Aso are widely criticised in the Chinese media as historical revisionists who deny or downplay Japan’s historic crimes in China.
China’s foreign ministry thus called Takaichi’s comments “a gross interference in China’s internal affairs” but there’s more at stake than that. China sees Taiwan as what analyst Zhu Tingchang calls the “lock around the neck of a great dragon”, part of a chain of US allies (including Japan) that block its access to the open Pacific.
What makes Takaichi’s comments alarming is their timing. Many analysts see signs that the US government, under Donald Trump, may be trying to reset relations with China and wavering in its commitment to fight for Taiwan. That in turn is encouraging China to test the limits of the West’s resolve, says Giulio Pugliese, an expert in Japan-China relations at the European University Institute.
Trump’s claims that Chinese leader Xi Jinping has told him there will be no invasion of Taiwan while Trump is president have reassured few. Taiwan has announced a hike in defence spending to 5 per cent of gross domestic product before 2030. Pugliese notes that the US White House “has not yet provided public cover to Japan”.
So far, Takaichi has weathered the diplomatic storm and her support remains high. But time may not be on her side. Billions have been wiped off the value of Tokyo-listed stocks since the spat began. The Chinese boycott could result in a loss of about 2.2 trillion yen (€12.35 billion) to Japan annually, according to Nomura Research Institute, a think tank. Beijing controls the supply of many critical minerals used in Japan’s car industry. Unlike Xi, Takaichi is accountable to voters who may eventually lose patience.
