An Asia-Pacific Showdown
China and Japan are in a diplomatic feud over Taiwan, with President Trump in the middle.
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China, Japan and Trump
By Keith Bradsher and River Akira Davis
For evidence that we’re at a critical moment in Asian diplomacy, look no further than Trump’s phone calls this week with Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, and Sanae Takaichi, the prime minister of Japan.
Xi and Trump spoke Monday, after Takaichi made the strongest push since World War II to assert publicly that Taiwan’s security is also Japan’s security.
Hours after his conversation with Xi, Trump spoke to Takaichi. Both provided upbeat assessments of their chat afterward, but gave few details.
After months of feuding with the United States over tariffs, China and Japan are now jockeying for American support for their respective positions on Taiwan. This is unusual. Strong American support for Taiwan, over which Beijing claims sovereignty, has historically been a given, as has America’s alliance with Japan. But Trump has a record of upending longtime U.S. positions. And he has been coy about his views on Taiwan.
The result is that China and Japan are in a showdown, with Trump in the middle.
Japan’s tough stance
China has been doing everything possible in recent years to isolate Taiwan. Countries like Lithuania and the Czech Republic that dare to have informal contacts with the island face swift retribution. Chinese air and naval patrols circumnavigate Taiwan with increasing frequency.
So few observers expected Takaichi to immediately take a tough stance. But this month, she told Parliament that an effort by China to blockade or invade Taiwan would be a “survival” issue for Japan. That term has legal implications, because it permits the mobilization of Japan’s military.
Takaichi’s comments were among the strongest ever by a Japanese leader about helping to defend Taiwan.
China responded with a series of economic, military and diplomatic measures. It has halted seafood imports from Japan, canceled concerts in China by Japanese performers, halted many flights to Japan and discouraged Chinese tourists and students from visiting the country.
Three Chinese warships sailed past a Japanese island four days after Takaichi’s remarks. Four armed Chinese Coast Guard ships have since passed close to Japanese-administered islands north of Taiwan. And China has asked the United Nations to issue a strong criticism of Takaichi’s remark.
But Japanese officials are not backing down. Japan has submitted a written riposte to the U.N. And during a trip on Sunday to a military base on the southern Japanese island of Yonaguni, about 110 kilometers east of Taiwan, Japan’s defense minister confirmed its intention to deploy antiaircraft missiles there.
The missiles don’t have the range to reach even halfway to Taiwan, much less mainland China, but could protect Japan’s southernmost territories. On Tuesday, Japan said it had scrambled fighter jets after detecting a drone, believed to be Chinese, near the island.
Revisiting World War II
The presidential calls come “amid arguably the most serious crisis in China-Japan relations in over a decade,” said David Sacks, a fellow for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The crisis has also been marked by a noteworthy rhetorical move on China’s part. When it comes to Taiwan, China is usually cast as the country seeking to disrupt the status quo. Xi and his foreign minister have instead begun presenting China as the guarantor of the post-World War II global order, and portraying Taiwan and its defenders as the challengers to that order.
According to a statement from Beijing, during their phone call, Xi emphasized to Trump that “China and the U.S. fought side by side against fascism and militarism; now, they should work together to safeguard the achievements of the victory in World War II.”
It’s an unusual gambit. Most conventional understandings of the postwar order have tended to include the U.S. alliances with Japan and South Korea among its pillars.
But it’s part of a broader effort on China’s part to recast the narrative of World War II, assigning itself a bigger role in the fight against fascism and imperial Japan. That was the message of a September military parade in Beijing, where Xi welcomed the leaders of Russia and North Korea.
That event also showcased three countries with nuclear weapons — China, Russia and North Korea — that were united as they faced off against Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, none of which, at the insistence of the United States, has developed its own nuclear weapons. They’ve been presumed to sit under the protection of the American nuclear umbrella.
For now, Trump has avoided tipping his hand on whether he’ll yield to Chinese pressure to change decades of American support for Taiwan. He has only said that he plans to travel to Beijing in April.
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The cause of the fire was not immediately known, but the police said on Thursday that they had arrested three people tied to a construction company on suspicion of manslaughter, saying that “gross negligence” on their part may have contributed to the blaze. The fire was still burning on Thursday morning, more than 18 hours after it started. Watch video of the disaster.
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