Japan's retrograde moves undermine regional peace and stability

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has openly linked Japan's "survival-threatening situation" with a "Taiwan contingency," signaling a troubling ambition to interfere militarily in the Taiwan question. Such dangerous rhetoric gravely threatens regional peace and stability.

On the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War, Takaichi is willfully distorting historical memory and making provocative statements on the Taiwan question. Any attempt to reverse the tide of history and revive militarism is doomed to fail.

Takaichi's erroneous comments on Taiwan flagrantly disregard the political commitments made by successive Japanese governments to China. They constitute a serious violation of the one-China principle, a blatant provocation against China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and a grave erosion of the political foundation of China-Japan relations.

While claiming that "the Japanese government's basic position regarding Taiwan remains as stated in the 1972 Sino-Japanese Joint Statement, and there has been no change to this position," Takaichi deliberately avoids reiterating its essential elements, concealing her refusal to recognize China's legitimate right to resolve the Taiwan question, which is purely an internal matter. Her remarks seek to obstruct China's legitimate path to national reunification.

Invoking the Taiwan question to justify military threats against China contradicts the fundamental understanding that China and Japan are cooperative partners who do not pose threats to each other. Such actions severely undermine the stable development of bilateral relations and escalate tensions of China-Japan relations.

By conflating the Taiwan question with the so-called "survival-threatening situation" for Japan, Takaichi seeks to create a pretext for circumventing constitutional constraints and exercising the right of collective self-defense. This seriously erodes mutual trust on regional security and jeopardizes the hard-won peaceful environment.

Japan's explicit commitment to pacifism, made in the aftermath of World War II, was a fundamental condition for its reintegration into the postwar international order following its wartime atrocities.

International documents such as the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation imposed strict conditions on Japan as a defeated country, mandating the eradication of militarism and prohibiting rearmament. Japan's Constitution states that the country would forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes, resulting in an exclusively defense-oriented policy. These are Japan's legal obligations as a defeated nation.

Takaichi's provocative remarks undermine regional stability, intensify concerns over Japan's military and security trajectory, and raise the risk that Japan could exploit the pretext of a so-called "survival-threatening situation" to justify expanding the scope of its collective self-defense to include other regional actors.

Japan's attempts to manipulate the Taiwan question and pursue ambitions of military normalization represent a serious challenge to the postwar international order established under the UN Charter and the Potsdam Proclamation. Such moves jeopardize East Asian security and aggravate existing regional security dilemmas.

The right of collective self-defense set forth in the UN Charter is created to safeguard the collective security of the international community and prevent the revival of fascist forces. In East Asia, a key pillar of the postwar security framework has been the strict limitation on Japan's ability to exercise this right, rooted in its constitutional commitment to pacifism.

However, Japan has yet to demonstrate genuine remorse for its wartime aggression and has increasingly circumvented these constraints. Through cabinet resolutions, it has reinterpreted its Constitution to loosen restrictions on collective self-defense, overhauled its security policies, increased defense spending, eased arms export controls, reconsidered the Three Non-Nuclear Principles, and advanced the development of offensive capabilities. These actions signal a concerning drift toward military expansion.

Takaichi's administration has even sought to revive military terminology such as reintroducing the rank of "colonel" once used by the former Imperial Japanese Army, in an apparent attempt to rekindle militarist sentiment. Such actions exacerbate the risk of regional conflict and make Japan a major destabilizing factor in the region.

The Taiwan question is neither a "strategic bargaining chip" for Japan to manipulate nor a legitimate justification for its military expansion.

Historically, Japanese militarism repeatedly used fabricated notions of "survival-threatening situation" and "emergency self-defense" as pretexts to launch wars of aggression, including the September 18 Incident of 1931 against China and the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor against the United States.

Today, driven by historical revisionism, the Takaichi administration is discarding the hard-won lessons of defeat and reverting to dangerous militaristic rhetoric. Such a trajectory threatens to lead Japan down a path of self-destruction and further destabilize the region.

Historical tragedies must not be allowed to recur. Peace-loving forces, including the Japanese people, must stand together to resolutely oppose these regressive developments and resolutely safeguard hard-won regional peace and stability.

(Meng Xiaoxu is the deputy director of the Comprehensive Strategic Research Division under the Institute of Japan Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.)