As Prime Minister Kan was about to visit the United States, the Japanese Defense Ministry released information on April 4 that the aircraft carrier Liaoning of the Chinese Communist Navy, accompanied by five frigates, sailed through the Miyako Strait toward the Pacific Ocean. The following day, a spokesman for the Chinese Communist Navy said that the Liaoning formation’s training in the waters around Taiwan was a routine training program organized by the Navy, and that the Chinese Communist Navy would organize similar exercises and training activities on a regular basis as planned.
This is a symptom of the strategic pressure brought to Japan by the Chinese Communist Party’s military expansion. Moreover, this pressure will grow. In December 2016, the Liaoning formation crossed the Miyako Strait for the first time, breaking through the first island chain towards the western Pacific; in May 2018, the CCP said the Liaoning formation had initially formed a system combat capability. 2019, the first homemade aircraft carrier Shandong was officially commissioned, and the CCP began to form a dual carrier battle group. Moreover, there are two aircraft carriers under construction at the same time; it is expected to have five aircraft carriers, including one nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, by 2030. 2019 CCTV revealed the CCP’s plan: to complete the construction of 10 aircraft carriers by 2049.
In addition to strategic pressure, Japan faces a tactical attack by the CCP. Most prominently, persistent years of Chinese Communist Party military aircraft, at high speed, have approached Japan’s periphery, forcing Japanese warplanes to take off in an emergency to intercept, which the CCP has used to significantly deplete Japan’s fighter force (in fact, Japan is exhausted with as many as 1,000 interceptor missions with only 100 F-15s per year). Japanese interceptions of CCP military aircraft peaked in 2016 at 851 sorties. Then, it dropped to 675 sorties in 2019 and further to 331 sorties in 2020, but this is not a reduction in the frequency of CCP flights, but rather a self-imposed restriction by Japan to intercept only the most threatening CCP warplanes. By comparison, NATO as a whole intercepted only 430 Russian aircraft in 2019 as well. What is even more infuriating for Japan is that the Chinese Foreign Ministry has backtracked, repeatedly stating that CCP military aircraft are conducting normal combat patrols over waters under its jurisdiction and international waters, and that Japan is the troublemaker for regional peace and stability.
In fact, years ago, the dominance of Sino-Japanese relations changed hands from Japan to the Chinese Communist Party. The “rise of the CCP” (the world’s second largest economy since 2011) has coincided with the expansion of the CCP (the first aircraft carrier was commissioned in 2012), and Japan’s security environment has seriously deteriorated. In this situation, Japan has been sticking to the Japan-US alliance (as the base axis), while being “strategically ambiguous” and careful on issues such as Hong Kong and Xinjiang (for example, it did not join the 30-odd countries including the US and EU in March to impose sanctions on the CCP for its large-scale violations against the Uighurs in Xinjiang), trying to ease relations with the CCP. For as China’s permanent neighbor, Japan cannot move away.
However, since 2020, Japan’s past policy toward China has faced serious challenges as the plague has emerged and hit the world hard, seriously affecting the evolution of the international strategic landscape. For example, on July 14, 2020, the Japanese government released the 2020 version of its Defense White Paper, which stated that the CCP was “unilaterally changing the status quo” in the East and South China Seas, seeking overseas military bases through the “Belt and Road”, and seeking political and economic benefits through anti-epidemic assistance. At the same time, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving postwar prime minister, abruptly left office due to illness and was replaced by Yoshihide Suga. A change in Sino-Japanese relations was brewing.
In 2021, the U.S. government changed and the Chinese Communist Party launched a new round of “war wolf diplomacy” against the backdrop of the “Centennial of the Party,” openly claiming to challenge the U.S.-led international order and stirring up tensions in the Taiwan Strait, East China Sea, and South China Sea, with Japan under direct duress. The most prominent event is the Communist Party of China’s Maritime Police Law, which broadly authorizes the use of force by the maritime police, and the high-profile patrol of the Diaoyu Islands by maritime police vessels.
Japan was forced to respond urgently. For example, at a meeting of the House of Representatives Budget Committee on February 8, Yoshihide Suga said that the implementation of the Chinese Communist Party’s Marine Police Law has increased tensions in the East and South China Seas, which is totally unacceptable to us. Another example is that the Japanese government upgraded the “Information Liaison Office” to the “Residence Countermeasures Office”, which is specifically responsible for monitoring information on Chinese vessels; Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said that if an attack by force equivalent to that from outside is encountered, if it is difficult to respond with the force of the Coast Guard, then the Self-Defense Forces “will be able to respond. If there is a forceful attack from outside, the Self Defense Force “will accept the order of defense deployment and respond”. And so on. However, these measures are far from enough to offset the pressure of the Chinese Communist Party.
More seriously, from a global perspective, the Diaoyu Islands are not a particularly important issue; for Japan, the greater strategic pressure comes from the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, and North Korea, with the Taiwan Strait issue being the most urgent and serious. Because Taiwan is most likely to be attacked by the Communist forces, then once Taiwan is lost, Japan faces the dilemma of being fully surrounded by the Communist forces. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand that on March 16, the U.S. and Japanese foreign ministers and defense ministers “2+2” meeting repeatedly expressed concern about the Chinese Communist Party’s violation of the international order and aggressive behavior in the region, and the two countries even included for the first time in the joint statement words related to the Taiwan Strait situation – “The four ministerial officials attending the 2+2 meeting stressed the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.
Outsiders see this as an important step taken by Japan. Bonnie Glaser, director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a U.S. think tank, said, “This is a very sensitive issue for Japan, so the mere willingness to include the Taiwan issue in the joint statement is an important step, and Beijing will not fail to take notice of it.”
On March 17, in defiance of diplomatic etiquette, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Zhijian cursed Japan’s willingness to act as a strategic vassal of the United States in order to satisfy its selfish desire to deter the rise of the Communist Party of China, and to betray its trust and trustworthiness and damage Sino-Japanese relations, as well as to draw wolves into its home and betray the overall interests of the region.
The Chinese Communist Party’s exasperation shows that Japan’s move has really hit the Chinese Communist Party where it hurts. Japan actually ran out of retreat long ago and must go on firmly.
On March 29, the Japan News Agency reported that the Ministry of Defense had begun to study how the Self-Defense Forces could support U.S. forces in a possible conflict in the Taiwan Strait, and on March 30, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun broke the news that the U.S. and Japan would issue a joint statement after the heads of the two countries met face-to-face in April, which would include the so-called “stability in the Taiwan Strait”. content. The Japanese media pointed out that this move is “extremely rare” – because the last time Taiwan was mentioned in a joint statement between the U.S. and Japanese heads of state was back in 1969: then Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato and then U.S. President Richard Nixon mentioned in a statement the so-called “security of Taiwan is of great importance to Japan. “The security of Taiwan is vital to the security of Japan.”
On the eve of the Japan-US summit, on April 6, Japan made a move when Foreign Minister Toshichika Mogi called Wang Yi for 90 minutes to express a rare “strong concern”, demanding that the Chinese Communist Party stop its incursions into disputed waters, calling on it to improve human rights conditions for the Uighurs and to stop its crackdown on Hong Kong. Once again, the Chinese Communist Party was furious and would only scold them for “not extending their hands too far.
Kan will go to the United States on April 16 to meet with Biden. Let’s wait and see what Japan’s next move will be, including how Japan-China relations will change.
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