Special to WorldTribune.com

By John J. Metzler, December 5, 2025

Beijing has gone rhetorically ballistic over comments by Japan’s new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could constitute “a situation threatening Japan’s survival” that thus could trigger a military response.

Her statement poses uncharacteristically tough talk from Tokyo at a time when tensions are running high in the Far East.

On Nov. 7, the Japanese prime minister commented in a parliamentary session in Tokyo that a frontal Chinese communist invasion of democratic Taiwan could bring a Japanese military response. Notice the word could not would. And why? The maritime sea lanes near and around Taiwan remain geo-strategically important for Japan’s commerce and trade as well as South Korea’s.

Moreover, the fact remains that Japan’s Prime Minister Takaichi is reaffirming and refining the sentiments of the respected former PM Shinzo Abe who had the strategic prescience to state the same reality a few years earlier.

Equally she’s reflecting clarity in a situation where China’s ongoing harassment of the democratically-governed island of Taiwan could someday turn into a formal military attack.

This remains a grim but possible reality for New Hampshire-sized Taiwan. Since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 when Mao’s communists took over the Mainland, Taiwan has remained a self-governed state and example of a free and prosperous Chinese society. Nonetheless Beijing’s communists claim Taiwan as an “renegade province” and have never renounced the use of military force to “reunify” Taiwan with the Chinese motherland.

Beijing’s UN Ambassador brought this complaint to the UN for added effect and political theater.

Japan remains quite confident of American support given the U.S./Japan Security Treaty and the close diplomatic and personal ties between President Donald Trump and Sanae Takaichi.

The issue nonetheless presents a triangular diplomatic imbroglio for Washington.

First, recently President Trump met with the Chinese leader during a recent APEC Summit in Busan, South Korea. The talks aimed to lessen Sino/American trade and tariff questions, to manage the relationship, and declare a truce in their trade war.

Second last week separate calls between both Donald Trump, Xi and Takaichi. President Trump wants better and more defined commercial ties with China especially for the American farming sector and correctly so. The call with Xi stressed trade, Taiwan and Ukraine. The U.S. president is set to visit China in April 2026, offering Donald Trump enhanced diplomatic standing.

In light of this, President Trump seemed reluctant to publicly support Takaichi’s comments on Taiwan. He does not wish to muddy the waters with “taking sides” even with a good friend in Tokyo, while trying keep a delicate balance with Beijing.

Beijing’s propaganda machine would “go ballistic” should the USA openly reaffirm PM Takaichi’s position at the expense of what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) views as a political red line issue, Taiwan.

There are far deeper legal issues restraining Japan in any confrontation over Taiwan, constitutional constraints being primary among them. Article 9 of Japan’s post-WWII Constitution severely restricts the country’s military power and more especially its use.

Given previous history, the American-written constitution specifically curtails Japan to self defense in any military showdown. Over the decades Tokyo’s politicians have sought to “redefine, reinterpret and even revise” the “true meaning” of the Article 9 clause.

Known as the Japan Self Defense Forces (SDF), the military remains relatively small but lethal though untested. But in recent years Japanese Defense spending trended upward. Coupled with the U.S. /Japan Defense Treaty, the island nation relies on a military dependency culture and on U.S. strategic support. Japan, like Taiwan and South Korea, also faces a declining birthrate which constrains military planning.

Outlying and exposed Japanese islands in the southern Ryukyu chain remain vulnerable. The long-disputed Senkaku islands (Daoyutai) though uninhabited are claimed by China. Shinjiro Koizumi, Japan’s Defense Minister, recently visited these southernmost points of Japan near Taiwan. Tokyo plans to deploy medium-range surface-to-air missiles on Yonaguni Island, 65 miles off Taiwan’s east coast as a deterrent.

Yonaguni is the end point of the Ryukyu island chain stretching south from the Japanese mainland.

Despite the relatively underfunded military in recent years, Taiwan President William Lai has pledged to increase defense spending to 5 percent of GDP as part of an ongoing strategy amid China’s threats of invasion.

“Taiwan, as the most important and most critical part of the first island chain, must demonstrate its determination and take on a greater responsibility in self-defense,” he stated.

China’s provocations towards Taiwan and increasingly Japan raise a dangerous precedent; but bluster and bullying often works. Until it doesn’t.

John J. Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of Divided Dynamism the Diplomacy of Separated Nations: Germany, Korea, China (2014). [See pre-2011 Archives]

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