Former Japanese prime minister Taro Aso, who attaches great importance to Japan’s partnership with Taiwan, paid a visit to Taiwan last week. When meeting with Vice President William Lai (賴清德), nominated as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate for Taiwan’s presidential election in January, Aso said that China’s expansionism has raised tensions in the Taiwan Strait. He stated that he would like to hear the thoughts of presidential candidates about whether Taiwan is determined to use its strength to defend itself should trouble arise, saying, “We are very concerned about this aspect.” Aso, who also serves as the vice president of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), is the highest-ranking incumbent LDP official to visit Taiwan since Japan severed formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1972.
That Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential nominee Hou You-yi (侯友宜) and Taiwan People’s Party presidential nominee Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) have both met with Aso while visiting Japan is an indication of Aso’s political weight and also reflects Japan’s strong interest in how Taiwan’s presidential election might influence the Indo-Pacific region.
As Japan’s ruling party, the LDP has stepped up its interactions between Japan and Taiwan, and the same can be said of Japan’s major opposition parties. Last month, a cross-party delegation of politicians from the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, the Nippon Ishin (Japan Innovation Party) and the Democratic Party for the People visited Taiwan. The delegation was headed by former Japanese minister of foreign affairs and current member of the Diet’s lower House of Representatives Seiji Maehara. Maehara said that Taiwan and Japan are mutually trustworthy partners and that the joint visit to Taiwan by members of Japan’s three major opposition parties demonstrated their firm opposition to attempts by China or any other authoritarian country to unilaterally change the “status quo” by force.
There is a growing consensus between Japan’s ruling and opposition parties that Taiwan is a strategic partner in the face of serious challenges in the region. Before being appointed as Japan’s minister of defense, Yasukazu Hamada visited Taiwan last year in his capacity as a member of the Japanese House of Representatives and met with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and other senior government officials.
Although Taiwan and Japan do not have formal diplomatic relations, they have a much closer relationship and level of trust than those between Japan and China. This echoes the words of the late Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, who said that a problem for Taiwan is a problem for Japan. Japan, like Taiwan, sees the main threat to its national security as originating from the expansionism of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) authoritarian regime.
This shift is reflected in successive editions of the Japanese government’s annual Defense of Japan White Paper. Since the 2019 edition, China has risen to the top of Japan’s security concerns to become the most serious threat. In the 2021 edition, Taiwan was taken out of the China section of the white paper and placed under the umbrella of US-China relations. In this year’s white paper, Taiwan is included in the section dealing with the “Three Strategic Documents,” which refer to the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy and the Defense Buildup Plan. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida revised the Three Strategic Documents at the end of last year, naming China as Japan’s “greatest-ever strategic challenge” and stressing that the Japan Self-Defense Forces should strengthen their counterattack capabilities.
These changes in Japan’s strategic thinking are not only due to rising tensions in the Taiwan Strait, but also because Japan’s own security environment has suffered from military encroachment by China.
According to the number of emergency flights conducted by the Japan Air Self-Defense Force, as published by the Japanese Ministry of Defense, prior to 2012, Japan had to respond to more harassment from Russian warplanes than those from China.
However, those numbers have flipped since then, with many more of the warplanes now coming from China. 2012 was also the year in which Xi Jinping (習近平) took over as general secretary of the CCP’s Central Committee and chairman of its Central Military Commission, prior to him becoming president of China the following year. Since then, China’s provocative behavior towards other countries has only grown more blatant.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is eager to break through the first island chain. Consequently, from Japan’s perspective, the comparative levels of threat from China and Russia have reversed. Following former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August last year, China launched a series of military exercises in areas encircling Taiwan.
At the time, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense announced that China had launched 11 Dongfeng ballistic missiles, while Japan said that China had fired nine missiles, five of which landed within Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
Although there was a difference between the numbers of missiles detected by Taiwan and Japan, Japan felt strongly that while China was retaliating against Taiwan, half of China’s missiles landed in waters near Japan’s southwestern islands. Such threats have prompted Japan to alter its military deployment to address the situation and formulate necessary responses that would arise in the event of an attack on its outlying islands.
Earlier this month, the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies think tank held a war games simulation in Tokyo, with participants from Japan, the US and Taiwan, this being the first time that Taiwan was invited to participate. The simulation scenarios included a hybrid warfare operation in which the PLA launched a cyberattack on Japan and Taiwan while at the same time using militia to land on the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), known in Japan as the Senkaku Islands. A second scenario dealt with Japan’s response to the US Armed Forces’ request for logistical support while also evacuating Japanese nationals, and a third dealt with the occurrence of a forceful attack. Participants pointed out that it is not possible to consider scenarios involving Japan’s southwestern islands and Taiwan separately, since the two zones are closely interdependent.
For the sake of military expansion, China has been causing provocations in maritime areas including the East China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, bringing about direct threats to Japan and Taiwan’s security. The situation in the Taiwan Strait is therefore not a question of whether Tsai’s administration accepts the so-called “1992 consensus.”
Similarly, Japan cannot stop worrying if there is nothing untoward happening in the Taiwan Strait. It would be wishful thinking or self-deception to think that Japan can rest easy so long as Taiwan keeps its head down and avoids upsetting Beijing. If China wants to cross the first island chain and make that situation permanent, the two bastions of democracy in Taiwan and Japan are obstacles standing in its way. If Taiwan were to lean toward China and effectively be annexed, Japan would lose a key ally and be more vulnerable to military encirclement by China, as would Taiwan if something similar happened to Japan. Taiwan and Japan therefore each depend on the security of the other.
The situation in the Indo-Pacific is changing rapidly. Just as Aso remarked in his speech while visiting Taiwan, Japan and Taiwan are partners who must ride out this storm together. The Japanese government might be slow in making decisions, but, as Aso said, any change and advance that Japan makes is accompanied by great determination.
Now that Japan’s policy toward China has reached a stage of strategic clarity, the prospective candidates competing to become Taiwan’s next president should not waver or be ambiguous. They should make it clear that they will work hand in hand with Japan in response to this great security threat.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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