Unpredictably, the newly elected Japanese Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, went to Parliament to warn Beijing: Tokyo will defend Taiwan militarily. China responded that if Japan did so, there would be a “crushing defeat.” The truth is that “a conflict in this region involves five or six states”
There is a new focus of international tension: Beijing and Tokyo are on a collision course over Taiwan and, if it happens, this conflict will be much more problematic on a global scale than the invasion of Ukraine or the rekindling of tensions in the Middle East, guarantees Miguel Baumgartner. The CNN Portugal commentator explains why: “It would have very serious implications for international trade.”
Tiago André Lopes, also a commentator for CNN Portugal, agrees that “it would be very complicated”. “Above all because we have an increasing rivalry between China and India, which have a common border”, he emphasizes, remembering that these are “two heavyweights”: “Two monumental States in terms of population – there are more than 3 billion people -, with the region also sharpened by the terrorist attacks that took place recently, whether in Bombay or in Islamabad; we can suddenly drag five or six States into a conflict in this region. Suddenly, Pakistan, India, China and Japan can all be involved in a conflict with multiple fronts and different causes”.
Map of countries identified by Tiago André Lopes (Source: Mapchart)
The beginning of friction between Beijing and Tokyo comes after she was sworn in as Japanese Prime Minister. She is the first woman to hold the position in Japan – and the first time she addressed the Foreign Affairs Committee in Parliament, as Tiago André Lopes explains, she decided to say, “that if there was an attack on , Japan considered itself validated to defend Taiwan”. Needless to say, “this went down badly in China”, says the international relations expert.
Having said that, the Chinese ambassador to Japan made a publication on X with “extremely inappropriate” comments, as the Japanese ambassador to China later referred to the Chinese government. What did Xue Jian, Chinese consul general in Osaka, write? “The dirty head that sticks out must be cut off”, he could, before the comment was deleted by himself.
After the publication was deleted, “the decision was made to explain to Japan that, if it decided to interfere with the Taiwan issue – which Beijing has already classified this year as an unresolved internal issue on many occasions -, China would respond by “. “This is the point we are at now”, concludes Tiago André Lopes, who warns right away that, “from a political point of view, East Asia is in a very exciting phase”.
“We saw this prime minister saying that she wanted to build a diplomatic bridge with Russia to resolve historical relations, but it has gone nowhere so far. We have seen this worsening of rhetoric between China and Japan, but also between China and India. India has reopened an air base in Kashmir. The region is getting tense and the main focus is Kashmir and the Koreas. We started to see this in August, when the US started asking its Pacific allies who would help in the event of an intervention in Korea or in Taiwan. This is a bad sign, the region is indeed very tense”, summarizes Tiago André Lopes.
Miguel Baumgartner believes that Japan has “several reasons” that justify this type of statement from its new prime minister. “It has a strategic, economic, political and even geographic position”, which justifies Sanae Takaichi’s position in the face of any potential threat against Taiwan which “would mean a serious distortion of stability in the region with direct implications for Japan’s own defense”.
“Taiwan losing its independence and being invaded by China would be a huge blow to Japan’s economy and the Indo-Pacific economy itself,” explains Miguel Baumgartner. The expert believes that it is now possible to say that the world is “entering a second Cold War”, but this time between the USA and China. “It is a Cold War that is mainly a commercial and political war, in an attempt to assert itself as the great world power”, he points out, remembering that there is one certainty: “China, at this moment, no longer wants to be seen as a second-class country”.
For the CNN Portugal commentator, the Chinese military parade on Victory Day was Beijing announcing to the rest of the world that “it has the economic, military, political conditions and even in terms of international partnerships to be on the same status as the United States”.
Handshake between Sanae Takaichi and Xi Jinping on October 31 (Source: Getty)
Baumgartner also recalls that, a few weeks ago, this was one of the reasons that led Donald Trump to deny Zelensky sending Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine: “The United States wanted to have a sufficient quantity of these missiles in its armament in case of any advance from China to Taiwan. Therefore, it is a political war like the Cold War used to be, a shotgun count.”
Tiago André Lopes believes that Beijing has been showing signs that it has been somewhat ignored by the international media agenda in favor of other topics. “In October, Xi Jinping was reempowered, updated the digital framework and did something else: he reorganized China’s Central Military Committee”, he highlights, explaining that the Chinese leader reduced the number of members of the body that manages military issues from seven to four – the so-called ‘Fujian generals’ were removed from positions of power. “This shows that China is preparing militarily for something. We don’t know what, but it is preparing for something.” The International Relations specialist understands that “the public challenge” by Sanae Takaichi “does nothing to help tensions and only further inflames this feeling that the Chinese State has to show strength in the region”.
Miguel Baumgartner understands that Takaichi knows that “Japan works almost as if it were the first force of resistance to this attempt at expansion by China”, but that he is also aware that in fact Tokyo would always be “pressured to intervene in any way” if the United States became involved in the defense of Taiwan, because there are logistics and North American military personnel on Japanese territory.
“I don’t believe there will be an invasion of Taiwan from today to tomorrow”, guarantees Miguel Baumgartner, but remembers that this topic “is something that is in Xi Jinping’s thinking and in the thinking of the Chinese Communist Party, which has always looked at Taiwan as a part of China”. Precisely the same thing that happened with Russia on the Crimean Peninsula – and that “is a key point”. To understand its importance, says Miguel Baumgartner, we just need to go back a few days to the statement in which Donald Trump said he was going to “end Biden’s war with a smaller Ukraine in territory”. “It was on this premise that Trump opened this Pandora’s box: if Trump allows Russia to do this, then he will also allow China to invade Taiwan. The precedent is more or less set.”
The truth is that “Taiwan is extremely important for US technological development and Washington has absolutely no interest in China launching an invasion.” Tensions in this region of the world “are always unknown, but I don’t believe we will reach an invasion of Taiwan”, concludes Miguel Baumgartner.
Donald Trump welcomed Volodymyr Zelensky to the White House on October 17th (Source: Getty)
Has Tokyo could be warlike enough? Two armies, the same “unknown”
Baumgartner believes that China is doing nothing more than “a stress test” to see how far both Japan and the US will go; precisely “in the same way that Russia also sometimes tests Washington’s patience.” “Nobody wants a conflict in that region, Taiwan doesn’t want a conflict, Japan doesn’t want a conflict, China doesn’t want it and even less do they want the United States, which has very strong economic interests in that region.”
But: if there is a Chinese invasion or military maneuvers in Taiwan, does the Japanese army have the capacity to attack the third largest army in the world? “We don’t know”, Tiago André Lopes promptly responds.
“We have great difficulty with China’s army. We don’t know what China’s operational combat potential is, because we haven’t seen China fighting for decades. We know that they have military equipment, we saw in the military parade that they have been modernizing, building, buying, that they are building a defense city, there’s all that, but we don’t know how they fight because we haven’t seen them fighting for a long time”, he says, warning that, on the other hand, “the same thing happens with Japan”: “Japan, because of the doctrine pacifist, it was only in 2017 that it began to be able to operationalize its army and, therefore, there are two unknowns”.
However, the International Relations specialist identifies a crucial difference: “Japan, last year at least, was the country in the world that spent the most on Defense – it was spending 20% of GDP.”
