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New Tensions in the East Between Japan and China
The Takaichi Spark, Xi’s Move, and the New Balance of Power in East Asia in the analysis by Emanuele Rossi
The phone call between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping—initiated by Beijing at the height of a diplomatic crisis with Japan—revealed just how fragile and dynamic the strategic architecture of East Asia has become. The two official readouts of the conversation—Beijing’s, centred on the “return” of Taiwan as a pillar of the post-war order, and Washington’s, which omits the issue entirely—add yet another layer of complexity to a situation triggered by a statement from Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi. Addressing the Diet, the prime minister suggested that a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan could constitute a direct threat to Japan’s survival, thereby opening the door—at least in theory—to a possible military response. Over the past two weeks Tokyo has been hit by an unprecedented Chinese reaction. The Chinese Communist Party has described the episode as “a grave violation of international law,” as stated in a letter of 21 November from China’s ambassador to the United Nations, Fu Cong, to Secretary-General António Guterres. As a result, the crisis has taken on a multilateral dimension: Beijing has brought the dispute to the United Nations, accusing Japan of seeking to “intervene militarily” in the Taiwan Strait and threatening to invoke its right to self-defence under the UN Charter.
Tokyo, observing the situation unfold while still struggling to interpret Donald Trump’s positions (a difficulty shared by several of its allies), has activated direct diplomacy with Washington. Prime Minister Takaichi spoke with Trump immediately after his call with Xi. While Xinhua claimed that Trump had told the Chinese leader that the United States “understands the importance of the Taiwan issue for China,” the Japanese prime minister reiterated to the American president the centrality of the bilateral alliance, their shared vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific—an idea inherited from the Abe Shinzo’s strategy and adopted by the United States—and the need to maintain coordinated management of relations with China. It is also a way of reaffirming that the US–Japan axis remains solid precisely as Beijing attempts to influence Washington’s stance on Taiwan (and on alliances more broadly, encouraging Trump to pursue a direct relationship with Xi).
Yet the current crisis is merely the visible tip of far deeper—historical, strategic, and economic—tensions that explain why the rift between China and Japan risks becoming long-lasting.
Takaichi’s words struck a raw nerve. China reacted with an intensified version of a familiar sequence: summoning the Japanese ambassador, demanding a retraction, issuing travel warnings, cancelling flights, and suspending imports of Japanese seafood. The message is twofold: punishing Tokyo in a symbolic sector (Japanese fish being central to the global imagination—see “sushi”) and signalling to other actors—starting with Taiwan, but also to the rest of the watching world—that China is prepared to deploy its full toolkit, for now economic, against anyone who crosses its “red lines.” This thunderous response weaves together three dimensions: the Taiwan question, which Beijing sees as an internal matter and an existential issue; the long-standing Sino-Japanese rivalry, continually revived in the political narrative of the Party-State; and the systematic use of economic coercion, now a structural element of Chinese foreign policy.
Why did everything escalate so quickly?
Relations between China and Japan deteriorate rapidly because they rest on a deep emotional, identity-based, and historical legacy. For centuries China was Asia’s hegemonic power; Japan, through Meiji-era modernization, overturned this hierarchy and went on to invade China between 1931 and 1945. The trauma of Nanjing remains one of the most sensitive pillars of contemporary Chinese nationalism. In this context, Beijing’s official narrative insists that Japan has never truly come to terms with its past, that its apologies have been insufficient or ambiguous, and that Japanese nationalist currents continue to render Tokyo a potentially unreliable actor.
Everything is heightened in the run-up to the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War (which Beijing frames as the “defeat of Japan”): Chinese propaganda has intensified references to atrocities committed by the imperial army and to China’s role in the founding of the UN, using history as political leverage to criticise Japan and reshape the international order. Beijing also repeatedly invokes the Cairo and Potsdam declarations, which it interprets as providing for the return of Taiwan to China, although many governments consider these to be statements of intent rather than legally binding instruments.
In Japan, by contrast, the memory of the war is more fragmented and often embedded in the country’s post-war pacifist identity. Over the past decade, however, Tokyo has adopted a more assertive posture—one that Beijing interprets as a potential return of Japanese militarism. This asymmetry of perceptions amplifies every statement and gesture, turning technical disputes into highly symbolic confrontations.
The Takaichi Factor: Japan’s Strategic Normalisation
The rise to power of Prime Minister Takaichi adds a further layer of complexity. The new prime minister is seen as the political heir to Abe Shinzo, the architect of the Indo-Pacific concept, who drew international attention to the region with his famous 2007 “Confluence of the Two Seas” speech—a region China has long regarded as its own backyard and hoped to dominate. Beijing recognises that Takaichi’s remarks on Taiwan are not impulsive but reflect a decade of strategic transformation. This is why they are not particularly surprising, and why China’s reaction is not the product of shock but of a carefully calibrated posture awaiting a trigger. Three factors accelerated Japan’s strategic shift: China’s rise and growing pressure in the East China Sea; the North Korean threat, with missile tests, achieved nuclear capabilities, and ideological-strategic alignment with Beijing; and doubts about US reliability, exacerbated by the oscillations of American foreign policy, perceived as isolationist and transactional under Donald Trump.
What is new is that the prime minister has made explicit what had previously remained in a zone of strategic ambiguity.
The Geometry of Deterrence: Taiwan and the East China Sea
To interpret the situation merely as friction between Beijing and Tokyo would be reductive. Beyond the Taiwan issue, the strategic centre of gravity of the crisis extends to the South China Sea, an essential corridor between mainland China and the Pacific. This area—marked by active maritime disputes (most notably the Senkaku Islands)—is traversed by energy routes critical to both countries and attracts competing claims and attention from other regional and global actors. Another element of the crisis concerns the role of the US–Japan alliance. Washington has long sought to strengthen Tokyo’s capacity to contribute to deterrence in the Taiwan scenario while trying to avoid dynamics that could trigger an uncontrollable escalation. When Takaichi states that a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan would constitute an existential threat to Japan, she translates into legal terms a concrete geographical and strategic assessment: if Taipei were to fall and Beijing were to acquire broader air-naval projection beyond the island, the Japanese archipelago—particularly Okinawa—would become significantly more vulnerable.
From Beijing’s perspective, however, this approach appears to be an attempt to internationalise the Taiwan issue, transforming it from an internal Chinese matter into a regional and even global security dossier (given Taiwan’s role in value chains such as semiconductors). While consistent with strategic debates beyond Japan alone, this approach exposes Tokyo to communicative risk: any nuance of retreat could be read as weakness, while any hardening could push it toward operational choices with unpredictable consequences—especially in a context where the US position still retains elements of uncertainty.
Domestically, Takaichi is, for now, rewarded by public opinion: approval ratings are rising, and her firmness is perceived as a necessary response to Chinese pressure, even in a country still divided on the idea of defending Taiwan militarily. Chinese propaganda plays on these internal divisions. Is there a risk that Japan’s leadership becomes “trapped” by its own rhetoric? Any step back might be read as capitulation to Beijing; any step forward risks turning Taiwan from a “hypothetical” issue into a concrete test of Japan’s willingness to fight. And might Takaichi have done so deliberately, to demonstrate Chinese aggressiveness and thus justify the measures that follow?
China and Japan are not only rivals: they are deeply interdependent economies. China is Japan’s largest trading partner; Tokyo is a key investor in China. Automotive, electronics, and semiconductor value chains cross the East China Sea multiple times in both directions. Chinese tourism is a significant driver of Japan’s economy, as is Chinese consumption of Japan’s high-value seafood. Will this economic interdependence be enough to pave the way toward de-escalation?
