The fallout from new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments on Taiwan continues to send shockwaves. The row erupted because Takaichi overturned Japan’s carefully cultivated posture of strategic ambiguity on Taiwan and crossed Beijing’s red line on what it contends is a renegade province it will reunite with the mainland. She is guilty of making explicit what has been implicit and adopting an expansive interpretation of 2015 security legislation allowing the overseas dispatch of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces even when Japan itself is not attacked.
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Takaichi’s remarks were preceded by a meeting with the Taiwanese representative on the sidelines of the APEC Summit in South Korea. This prompted a stern rebuke from Beijing, making Takaichi’s Taiwan comments especially provocative.
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Yet Takaichi has a history of links to Taiwan, including a visit in April before she became Prime Minister, where she met Taiwanese President William Lai and other top politicians. During her visit she also called for establishing a “quasi-security alliance” among like-minded democracies in the Indo-Pacific. She has packed her ruling Liberal Democratic Party with pro-Taiwan colleagues. Still, her comments have left Japan’s diplomats in damage control mode and the business community wondering if she fully grasps the responsibility of leadership.
At the same time, the barrage of vitriol unleashed by China castigating Takaichi as a warmongering militarist includes a reprehensible threat by the Chinese consul-general in Osaka about beheading Takaichi. This recrudescence of wolf warrior diplomacy is counterproductive and enables Japan to depict China as the bullying hegemon.
The latest Japan-China spat is reminiscent of the late Shinzo Abe’s speech at Davos in 2014 about the risk of sleepwalking to war, remarks that were then widely interpreted as saber-rattling toward China. Those remarks came on the heels of Chinese and Japanese diplomats waging an op-ed war—accusing each other of being the regional Lord Voldemort of Harry Potter fame.
Beyond shrill denunciations, this time around China has tightened the economic vise, discouraging travel to Japan and reimposing a ban on seafood imports. With the Japanese economy in the doldrums and vulnerable, Beijing could do much more to penalize Japan but thus far it has been relatively restrained because China also needs Japanese investment, technology, and markets as it navigates its own economic crisis.
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Beijing wants Takaichi to retract her remarks but that is a non-starter; she went as far as she could the next day in unequivocally stating she would in future refrain from commenting on hypothetical security contingencies. Beijing is infuriated and wants to underscore just how unacceptable her comments are, and is therefore unlikely to provide an off-ramp anytime soon. A prolonged standoff will harm both economies but, unlike Takaichi, Xi Jinping doesn’t need to worry about elections.
Although the Japan-China spat over Taiwan is a useful distraction from China’s economic woes, given that Japan-bashing plays well in the theater of nationalism, there are risks. Beijing is overplaying its hand and stoking an Arc of Anxiety stretching from New Delhi, Canberra, and Jakarta to Manila, Bangkok, Hanoi, and Seoul. Japan’s regional partners have kept their heads down, but can’t help being unnerved by China’s bellicose behavior and what it may portend.
So why did Takaichi torpedo bilateral relations so early in her premiership? Some pundits speculate that her sleeping just two to four hours a night might have been a factor, but it seems unlikely that such crucial comments were simply a gaffe. A blustering China is useful to rally domestic support for her stated goal of sharply increasing defense spending. Moreover, standing up to China is red meat for her conservative base and she may have anticipated earning U.S. President Donald Trump’s respect. She may have also expected China to quickly get over it, and that the costs of crossing the red line would be limited.
Another factor to consider is that the Japanese government is alarmed by the prospect of a G-2 scenario in which Trump and Xi shake hands over Japan’s head. The fear is that an arrangement without consulting Japan could lead to its interests in a free and open Indo-Pacific being undermined, all while highlighting Tokyo’s declining global influence. The recent U.S.-China détente is troubling enough for Japan, but Trump ramped up these apprehensions by chatting with Xi and announcing an exchange of visits in 2026. The Trump Administration’s pro-Russian Ukraine peace plan released last week has only upped anxieties among U.S. allies. His uncharacteristic public silence on the escalating Sino-Japanese tension and a reported phone call this week, in which he told Takaichi to dial down the dispute, was hardly reassuring either.
Lest we forget, the fate of 23 million Taiwanese hangs in the balance. Hardly any of them support reunification with mainland China because they enjoy democratic freedoms and know that those would be quashed under authoritarian rule. But in the age of Trump—and whatever one makes of the Japan-China spat—it is clear shared values are taking the backseat.
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