“Taiwan’s peace is Japan’s peace,” visiting Japan Innovation Party leader Nobuyuki Baba told a news conference in Taipei on Wednesday, calling for joint efforts to deter a Chinese invasion.
Baba arrived in Taiwan on Tuesday for a three-day visit, leading nine other Japan Innovation Party lawmakers.
Both Tokyo and Taipei are doing their best to deter a Chinese attack, which would seriously affect the livelihoods of the more than 25,000 Japanese living in Taiwan, Baba said.
Photo: CNA
Any such military action would also likely affect Japanese islands near Taiwan, he added.
“Therefore, people in Japan believe in the saying that ‘a Taiwan emergency is a Japanese emergency,’ or we can say ‘Taiwan’s peace is Japan’s peace,’” he said.
Tokyo is seeking to increase defense spending to 2 percent of the nation’s GDP from the current 1 percent, he said.
Taiwan and Japan should work together to constitute a strong joint defense against Beijing, including by building deeper intelligence-sharing networks, he said.
Baba acknowledged that Japan and China have close economic and trade exchanges, with many Japanese companies doing business in China.
“We are not saying no to China on all fronts,” but as a country that values democracy and human rights, Japan is not accepting everything Beijing says and does, he said.
Earlier the same day, the group met with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who urged the Japanese lawmakers to support Taiwan’s bid to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.
In other news, Kevin Maher, former head of the Office of Japan Affairs at the US Department of State, told Nikkei Shimbun that Tokyo’s slow decisionmaking process would affect the US’ response in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
The Tokyo-based think tank Japan Forum for Strategic Studies hosted a tabletop exercise in Tokyo last month in collaboration with military officials and analysts from Taiwan, the US and Japan simulating a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
The exercise included a scenario in which the Chinese military landed on the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), known as the Senkakus in Japan, Nikkei reported.
“We had to wait for the Japanese prime minister, in the scenario — two weeks — to say that this is an armed attack on Japan,” Maher said.
The US, Japan and Taiwan have to coordinate closely while preparing to respond to a crisis that would affect Taiwan, he said, adding that the Diaoyutai Islands must be included in the preparation, as it is closely tied to what would happen in Taiwan.
A slow decisionmaking process would weaken the effectiveness of deterrence, he said.
Tokyo must first declare the situation an “armed attack” against Japan for it to work with the US on a military response, he said.
If Japan delays such a declaration out of a desire to avoid conflict, “it really ties the US’ hands,” he added.
Christopher Johnstone, former East Asia director for the US National Security Council, urged the establishment of a trilateral mechanism of coordination between Japan, the US and Taiwan to decide the responsibilities of military operations and evacuating civilians, Nikkei reported.
During the tabletop simulation, “there was no discussion about Japan’s role, beyond defending its own territory,” he said.
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