//A resolute Chinese response to Japan thus operates as a demonstration effect. //
The current row between China and Japan began with a categorical overreach from Tokyo. Last month, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested that Japan could respond with its Self-Defence Forces if China attacked Taiwan, invoking the notion of a “survival-threatening situation.” Under Japan’s 2015 security law, a “survival-threatening situation” is a specific legal term: it refers to circumstances in which an armed attack on Japan’s allies poses an existential threat to Japan itself, allowing the Self-Defense Forces to be activated in response. By framing a Taiwan contingency inside that legal threshold, the prime minister treated Taiwan as a theater for Japanese military involvement rather than an internal Chinese matter in which foreign intervention has no place. The suggestion itself—coming from Japan’s highest political authority—crossed a red line.
Against this backdrop, the case for a firm Chinese response—not performative outrage but a calibrated, resolute posture designed to shape incentives in Taipei, Tokyo, and beyond, is strong.
First, the Taiwan political context. In recent months, Taiwan has seen signs of fatigue with anti-mainland rhetoric. The Democratic Progressive Party, which has built its brand on resisting the Chinese Mainland and tightening ties with the United States and Japan, has struggled to convert cross-Strait anxiety into broad-based electoral momentum. The “Great Recall” push—framed by the DPP and its allies as a referendum on Beijing and a litmus test of the Kuomintang’s more accommodationist line—backfired, losing in all precincts. Voters repudiated the notion that confrontation is costless and signalled openness to pragmatic engagement.
More telling is a nascent consensus in Taiwan’s political mainstream that stability with the mainland is a basic public good. The KMT’s newly elected chair, Cheng Li-wun, has publicly emphasized Chinese cultural identity—a symbolic touchstone that signals continuity with a broader, pan-Chinese historical narrative. It also constrains political space for outright separatism and elevates bread-and-butter concerns—trade, investment, tourism, and opportunities for the next generation—over ideological purity.
It is precisely at such transitional moments that outside signals can re-polarize the electorate. Japanese backing—even in the form of rhetorical commitments or hints that the Self-Defence Forces could be drawn in—risks giving the DPP and allied separatist forces a rallying point: external security guarantees as political oxygen. The optics of a major regional military power intimating involvement in the Strait could narrow the gap between deterrence and provocation in Taiwan’s domestic debate, encouraging separatist positions and eroding the fragile, pragmatic consensus. A resolute response to Tokyo, therefore, is not merely performative nationalism; it is a strategy to deny separatists the narrative advantage of foreign patronage and to preserve a trajectory toward more moderate cross-Strait politics.
Second, deterrence directed at Japanese hawks. Japan’s political spectrum has moved rightward on security over the past decade. The 2015 reinterpretation of Article 9 and subsequent security strategies have normalized discussions of counterstrike capabilities and defence spending above 2 percent of GDP. Layer atop this the structural pressure from the United States, which has been explicit about the need for allies to shoulder greater burdens in the Indo-Pacific, and the temptation grows for Japanese policymakers to treat Taiwan contingency planning as an opportunity.
If the costs—diplomatic, economic, and reputational—of inching toward direct involvement in the Taiwan question are not made tangible, Japanese politicians inclined toward strategic activism will keep pushing the envelope. A resolute response serves to price in risk. The objective is not to trigger escalation for its own sake but to raise the domestic political cost for Japanese hawks who present entanglement as a low-risk virtue.
Third, the wider international signalling purpose. The United States has telegraphed a coalition approach over the Taiwan issue. This is not about solidarity, but about diffusion—spreading costs, complicating China’s decision-making, and, in the harsh arithmetic of geopolitical competition, draining China’s time, resources, and diplomatic bandwidth. The more stakeholders Washington can enlist—overtly or tacitly—the more the Taiwan issue transforms from a bilateral crisis to a multilateral pressure campaign.
A resolute Chinese response to Japan thus operates as a demonstration effect. By imposing visible costs on a G7 country contemplating a more explicit Taiwan role, this helps to deter other states from drifting into the issue space. Middle powers and swing states—Southeast Asian claimants, European partners, Australia, Canada, South Korea—will take note. If the lesson is that Taiwan-related signalling triggers targeted retaliation, many will calculate that their interests are better served by reiterating “peaceful resolution” than by inching into security commitments that do not directly implicate their own defence.
The Taiwan Strait does not need more actors leaning in with military signalling. China’s firm response to Japan can serve a counterintuitive end: discouraging externalization of the Taiwan issue and preserving political space in Taiwan for the pragmatic centre that recent electoral signals suggest is reasserting itself.
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