This article was originally published on Pacific Forum and is republished with permission. Read the original article here.
As the Chinese government looked on in anger, the foreign and defense ministers of the United States and Japan met in Tokyo last week and announced plans to strengthen bilateral security cooperation.
The United States said it would upgrade its military headquarters in Japan to a joint military command and work closely with Japan's new Joint Operational Command to improve interoperability between the two allies. The joint statement sharply criticized China over a wide range of policies.
In response, the People's Republic of China (PRC) Foreign Ministry said it “calls on the United States and Japan to immediately stop interfering in China's internal affairs, stop creating conflict, and stop provoking a new Cold War.”
This is yet another milestone in China's long-standing failure to appease its main Asian rival. Fundamentally, China doesn't get the Japan it wants, but that's mainly due to Beijing's own counterproductive behavior.
What does the Chinese government want from Japan?
First, Beijing wants all other governments, including Japan’s, to refrain from criticizing China or its policies. Second, China wants the international community to consider Japan forever unfit to be a regional leader because of Japan’s sins in the 20th century. Third, Beijing wants Tokyo to acquiesce to all Chinese claims over disputed territories, including the South China Sea and Taiwan, as well as in the case of rival claimants. Fourth, Beijing wants Japan to be militarily weak and unaligned or uncoordinated with the United States, making China an invincible strategic power in the region. Finally, China wants Japan to provide China with advanced technology and expertise to help China climb the value-added ladder and ultimately gain global leadership in key emerging technologies, as envisioned in Beijing’s ambitious blueprint, “Made in China 2025.”
But on each of these criteria, Tokyo is moving in the opposite direction to China's wishes.
Until recently, Japan has been relatively cautious in criticizing China. But a joint statement between the United States and Japan in late July was packed with criticism. It said China “seeks to reshape the international order in its own interest at the expense of others,” and that it “uses political, economic and military coercion” to “pose the greatest strategic challenge in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond.”
The statement cited China's “escalating actions” around Japan's southwestern islands, the “rapid” and opaque expansion of China's nuclear weapons inventory, its “unlawful maritime claims” and “provocative activities” in the South China Sea, dangerous harassment by Chinese ships and aircraft, intimidating acts against Taiwan, and Russia's support for the war in Ukraine.
It also condemns Chinese policies within the country, such as “the dismantling of Hong Kong's autonomy and freedoms, as well as human rights issues in China, including in Xinjiang and Tibet.”
Despite China's contemptuous diplomacy, Japan's leadership is increasingly welcomed in the region, and while many Chinese and Koreans harbor resentment, Japan is generally viewed favorably in the eyes of the international community.
Chinese officials continue to say that Japan needs to “gain the trust of its Asian neighbors,” but its neighbors have moved on. In a 2024 Southeast Asian Elite Attitudes Survey conducted by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, respondents named Japan as the “most trusted” major power.
Despite growing pressure from China since 2012, Japan has refused to recognise China's claims to the Senkaku Islands (which Beijing calls the Diaoyu Islands) as legitimate, insisting the issue is resolved.
Japan has never agreed with Beijing's claims to sovereignty over Taiwan and in recent years has become increasingly vocal in its criticism of Chinese attempts to militarily intimidate the Taiwanese government.
Tokyo supports a 2016 ruling by the Permanent Intergovernmental Court of Arbitration that invalidated China's claims over much of the South China Sea.
The U.S.-Japan military alliance remains healthy and is deepening. Japan is strengthening its military and loosening post-World War II restrictions on the use of force. Both trends are fundamentally unfavorable to China.
As Japan has gradually remilitarized over the decades, Beijing has vocally criticized every significant move.
But this has not prevented the Japanese government from accelerating rearmament over the past two years, during which it has increased defense spending from about 1% to 2% of Japan's GDP, built a long-range strike capability, commissioned small aircraft carriers, lifted the arms export ban, and placed Japan's three military forces under a new unified command.
Japan supports economic risk aversion in exchange for providing a steady supply of advanced technology to China. In particular, Tokyo has cooperated with Washington's campaign to limit the transfer of advanced semiconductors to China.
All of this is happening due to a series of aggressive moves primarily by Beijing, with North Korea and Russia to a lesser extent.
The Japanese consider China's military buildup excessive and worrying. China's rapid expansion and growing threat to Taiwan seems to make it more likely that Beijing could seize the island, which would put China in a position to control sea lanes vital to Japan's well-being.
President Xi Jinping's decision in 2013 to build a group of military bases on artificial islands in the South China Sea led the region, including Japan, to view China's foreign policy more pessimistically.
Beijing has successfully convinced the Japanese public that China is threatening to annex Japanese territory. China overreacted to the Japanese government's decision to purchase the islands from a Japanese family and has increased the number of its government vessels sailing near the Senkaku Islands since 2012. China has occasionally implied in official media, and even by President Xi Jinping himself, that China, not Japan, is the rightful owner of the Ryukyu Islands, including Okinawa.
The Ryukyu Islands form the southwestern tip of the Japanese archipelago. Map: Wikipedia
Finally, Russia's plans to annex all of Ukraine starting in 2022 have alarmed Japan, primarily due to the perception that a Russian invasion would increase the likelihood of a Chinese war of conquest in Asia. Beijing's diplomatic and material support for the Russian war effort has not allayed Japan's fears.
Just before the Japan-U.S. summit in July, Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Chinese government media reported that Wang told Kamikawa, “China-Japan relations are at a critical juncture where progress will be reversed if we do not make any progress,” which is the same as what Wang said more than a year ago. However, if there was such a “critical juncture,” Japan is already well past it.
Denny Roy ([email protected]) is a senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.
