MUCH like the Philippines, Japan today is being pushed into escalating tension with China, resulting to economic suicide which we may call more appropriately for Japan as an economic Hara-kiri or ritual suicide.
This is all due to the very ill-advised statement of new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s itchy tongue to step on China’s Taiwan Red Line, suggesting a Chinese takeover of Taiwan may force Japan into a military response.
China did not wait half-a-millisecond to react vehemently with a torrent of denunciations of the Takaichi statement, its media recalling countless horrendous historical examples of Japanese atrocities from the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894 to the Second World War which Japan started in 1931 by its invasion of Manchuria, the 1937 Nanjing (Nanking) Massacre and through the end of the war in 1945, highlighted by all the horrendous war crimes Japan committed against China and the Chinese people.
China has given the sternest warning to Japan with its Ambassador to Japan, HE Wu Jianghao citing the “enemy state” clauses of the UN Charter to warn against possible Japanese military intervention in a Taiwan Strait conflict namely, Articles 53, 77, and 107 that authorized actions against former Axis powers if they resume aggression.
China’s UN representative Fu Cong sent a letter to the UN chief condemning Takaichi’s dangerous remarks, warning if Japan uses force to intervene in any way, then China is authorized to counterattack in accordance with international law.
While it is understood that Takaichi is from the right-wing of the ruling LDP party and a protégé of assassinated right-wing leader Shinzo Abe, such outrageous stepping on an obvious Chinese Red Line on the Taiwan issue is just over the top.
A Japanese PM could not be doing this out of political immaturity as some contend; it is likely a diktat from the occupying power, the US, to escalate tension in Asia while President Donald Trump preps up for his April 2026 China visit to parlay for more soybean purchases by China and other concessions.
China is not taking the escalation sitting down, however. Aside from its diplomatic and verbal assaults on Japan, it is has taken action with trade boycotts.
This holiday month of December, it is estimated that 30 percent of 1.4-million trips to Japan planned by Chinese tourists have been cancelled with Japanese tourism expected to lose $1.2 billion in revenues.
A Chinese boycott of Japanese seafood exports is also estimated to cost Japan another $1.17 billion revenues. All these coming as the Japanese economy is imploding from decades of cheap money.
As Henry Kissinger said, “It is dangerous to be America’s enemy. It is fatal to be America’s friend.” And presently, the US is sacrificing all its friends to leverage against its perceived rival China.
The Philippines was the first to be sacrificed, losing 1.5 million Chinese travelers each year and its $1.5 billion tourism revenues for ramping the fake West Philippines Sea territorial dispute.
We have also lost billions more in infrastructure investments just to sell the “China threat” that only 4 percent of Filipinos believes, actually, after a decade of anti-China narrative.
My son teaches English to young Japanese students in Japan, he frets that Japanese inflation is already hurting his pocketbook now,
“At this rate Takaichi won’t last very long,” he said.
The same may be true of US lackey Bongbong Marcos in the Philippines.