Illinois Global Review

November was a significant month for Americans. Aside from the end of the government shutdown, the potential peace treaty for the Russia-Ukraine war has begun to attract significant attention. Yet, on the other side of the Pacific, November marks a turning point for the relationship between China and Japan. When the new prime minister of Japan, Sanea Takaichi, stated that the vicinity of Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation”, China was extremely enraged. The cold relations that had just begun to warm up between the two nations immediately fell into the bottom of the East China Sea once again.

While bilateral relations have generally improved since World War II, tensions between Japan and China have intensified in recent years over territorial disputes and Taiwan. Increasing interaction between Japan and Taiwan’s officials, Takaichi's statement, and the follow-up actions only worsen that situation. Without question, Beijing feels pressure. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has been normalizing its strategic patrol around Taiwan, and for the past 3 years, there have already been 5 live-fire drills in the same area, making it a new regional norm. As China’s global position has risen in the new century, it has started to reshape its regional and international strategic location; meanwhile, Japan, due to domestic political structural change and increasing safety cognition, applies new, risky, and radical diplomacy policies.

After stepping into the WTO, China’s rapid economic development became well-known. Yet, there was relatively little talk about the chance of transforming these economic benefits into political and military capital. During this period, China-Japan relations, for a long time, were dubbed as “hot economy, cold politics”. Although Japan deemed the rise of China as a threat, the latter felt heavily disappointed with Japan's desires in the East China Sea and Taiwan. Commercial activities once played a role as a buffer in East Asia's geopolitics, preventing frictions from escalating into open confrontation and maintaining a subtle balance in power competition.

Yet, this fragile balance of power broke up fast after Obama's administration announced the "Pivot to Asia” strategy. U.S. pressure on the first island chain, highlighting Taiwan's agenda on the international stage, forced China to reevaluate the geopolitics around the East and South China Sea. These worries of Beijing can be justified by the rapid military development of PLA forces after 2015. Increasing military power did not immediately trigger conflicts between the two nations, but accumulated for around 10 years, until Takaichi's statement became the spark. that burnt the forest, remarking that the redistribution of power in East Asia has become an on-stage issue right now.

The Chinese diplomatic style, as usual, mainly focuses on economic pressure. China put recent arrangements for aquatic products import deals with Japan on hold, together with tightening rare earth control and tariff measures, reflecting Beijing’s preference for applying pressure through trade and supply chains rather than immediate military escalation. Besides these movements, Beijing also leads this tension into social and cultural realms: the diplomatic department announced Japan as “a potential unfriendly travel area,” which led to over forty thousand flight cancellations. According to Japanese managers, “this [was] the largest canceling flood after the pandemic”. The introduction of Japanese films in China has also been significantly tightened. Traditionally, China’s diplomacy has relied on government-to-government interactions and economic pressure. However, clearly, Beijing has expanded its approach to include travel warnings for Japanese tourists and restricting cultural imports. These moves indicate an effort to reduce interdependence in advance and to maintain flexibility in responding to potential shifts in regional power dynamics.

In addition to economic factors, Chinese military forces have considered a formal way to shock Japan as well. On November 7th, the third aircraft carrier, Fujian, was formally put into service in the PLAN. They then immediately held an armed drill on the new ship, successfully practicing electromagnetic launches on J-15, J-35, and KJ-600. The reason why this event is so important is that the only other nation that controls this technology is the United States, on the USS Ford. Now, as China’s neighbor, it is imaginable how much pressure Japan feels with such a threat just resting on its door. Such capacity directly turns into a strategic worry that provides a foundation for the right-wing narrative. This also explains Sanea Takaichi's motivation for making radical statements, an action taken in order to satisfy domestic opinion. Nevertheless, from a more macroscopic perspective, I believe that this is a brand-new Chinese diplomatic strategy: pulling its adversary into an arms race.

Combining these two movements, China, once again, declared a significant red line that never should be touched by any other nation: Taiwan. This elaborate plan not only drastically punished Japan but also shocked others. So far, At the time of this article's writing, diplomatic affairs from Vietnam, Pakistan, Colombia, and even France have posted their statement on the “One China Role”. This show the spillover effect of China's current operation. Yet, this article believes that this friction will not move into real conflicts: looking back, when Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in 2022, the Chinese government showed the characteristic of "strong statement but controlling the pace". This shows a possibility of Beijing holding a long-term strategic planning that would not be influenced by others' external movements. So far, China’s reflections are like structural preparation for available regional power redistribution, instead of directly starting conflicts with Taiwan or Japan.

Unlike the strategic focus China displayed in the event, the new administration of Japan appears to show clear rashness. Behind the pattern hides not only the driving force of security anxiety, but also basic domestic politics and structural changes. In recent years, Japan’s political circle has shown a strong conservative swing, as social anxiety from thirty years of suspending economic development combines with rapid growth in China's comprehensive strength. Under such an atmosphere, “The China Threat” has gradually evolved from a policy debate to a cross-factional political consensus. Naturally, any politician who highlights the “security agenda” can easily gain massive support from voters. Sanea Takaichi's rise is best understood as the culmination of “Abe Doctrine” in Japan. As both the political heir and most radical proponent of the Abe Doctrine’s security agenda, she embodies its most assertive form. Even though the Liberal Democratic Party’s largest faction, the Seiwa-kai, [has been severely damaged by political donation and black money scandals](https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASTCX154HTCXUTIL01HM.html) - developments that would normally be expected to diminish its policy influence - this institutional weakening has not translated into ideological retreat. Instead, Takaichi's emergence marks the triumph of Abenism in contemporary Japanese politics.

With domestic support, Japan’s government continuously takes actions beyond the current security framework, from frequent high-level officials visiting Taiwan, to repeated "Indo-Pacific security environment" in diplomatic documents, these actions show Japan’s attempt to gain the initiative on defining the regional security agenda. Japan's defense budget for the fiscal year 2025 has reached 11.3 trillion yen, having increased for thirteen consecutive years. It also plans to reach 2% of the GDP by 2027 - this scale has already surpassed the ceiling of Japan's post-war security policy. These actions can certainly be interpreted as deterrence against China, yet compared to China’s military budget, which did not even reach 1.5% of GDP, it is hard to say how long Japan can stay in a deterring situation that is effective. By forcing opponents to enter a military race that they cannot last long, China is using military force as a new diplomatic tool. The resource input required for this competition is far beyond what countries that rely on electoral politics can easily bear. But this policy has a great benefit for Japan’s other strategic target: enhancing its strategic presence within the regional system dominated by the United States.

Another interpretation of Japan’s diplomatic rashness is its power competition within the global contraction conducted within the current U.S. leading system. As U.S. resources are absorbed by Eastern Europe and the Middle East, Tokyo seeks to draw greater attention to the Western Pacific in order to reaffirm its irreplaceable position within the First Island Chain. From Japan’s perspective, a new crisis is preferable to being forced into greater risks following sudden changes in the Taiwan Strait, since it reduces the possibility that the U.S. might push for strategic contraction toward its “important ally”, like Afghanistan. This approach constitutes a gamble, which reveals Japan’s China policy cannot be fully autonomous based solely on internal demands. Yet, unfortunately, Washington’s response has been notably restrained. Following a phone call with Xi, Trump warned Takaichi against provoking China, signaling that the U.S., especially under the Trump administration, was reluctantly drawn into escalation by a junior ally. Whether Japan can ultimately avoid marginalization-or even abandonment-under the scenario of Chinese unification, therefore, still remains an open question.

Thus, the radical policy from Japan is driven by structural anxiety into “initiative security policy”. But the cost for that strategy is also clear: excessive rashness not only easily leads to regional misjudgments, but also traps Japan in an arms race set by China. For a country with limited fiscal space and a continuously aging population, such a long-term competition is neither sustainable nor can it strengthen its domestic governance capabilities.

All in all, the current friction between China and Japan is not a coincidence; instead, it is an inevitable structural power alternation, domestic politics choice overlapping with the external strategy environment. China gives up the low profile when it rises up from economic benefits, and we are witnessing the process of it turning into a sophisticated diplomacy player that applies both economic and military tools to protect its core benefits; Japan, under long-term economic stagnation, political rightward shift, and the transfer of regional power, chooses radical diplomacy to reinforce Align with United States to promote its security place. Both sides circling on the Taiwan agenda is becoming a centre of the China-Japan “security dilemma”.

Yet, although this tense situation will undoubtedly go deeper, it is strongly controllable. China still targets all kinds of development as its goal. Thus, it prefers to put pressure on the economy, limited military action, and a clear strategic signal to prevent the situation from getting out of control; Under such context, Japan has primarily relied rash rhetoric rather than substantive action, yet it is still relying on the United States to confront China, and the United States itself needs to keep a delicate balance with China. That limits the ability of Tokyo to break the current frame, and Trump’s phone call with Takaichi is the best evidence.

The most likely possible future for the West Pacific may enter a norm where we can see long-term confrontation, limited conflict, and structural stability. This indicates a trend of actors competing, alerting, and negotiating with each other over Taiwan and the East China Sea, yet refraining from a real war. For China, it needs to shape a favorable regional order for developing and possible alternation with the lowest cost; for Japan, it will try its best to keep itself in the center of the stage, avoid being a margin or ignored. The current tension between China and Japan is an inevitable product of the power transition. Yet even if a total conflict still has a low possibility of taking place, the cost of misjudgment always exists: escalating arms race, deeper economic decoupling, and all other factors may break the fragile stability. The most likely scenario for East Asia in the future is through high-level communication, security dialogue, and crisis management mechanisms. Both sides will be required to seek coexistence in competition rather than zero-sum confrontation. This requires China and Japan to demonstrate strategic restraint and political wisdom.

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