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Deterioration of China-Japan Relations and the "History War" (歷史戰) |
| January 13, 2026 |
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Kitae LEESenior Research Fellow, Sejong Institute | ktleekorea@sejong.org
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In early November 2025, Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae (高市早苗) explicitly articulated the worst-case scenario envisioned under Japan's security legislation, stating during a budget committee session in the House of Representatives that "an armed conflict in the Taiwan Strait could constitute a sonritsu kiki jitai (存立危機事態), or a 'situation threatening Japan's survival.'" The "sonritsu kiki jitai" is not mere political rhetoric, but a legal concept introduced through the 2015 revision of Japan's security laws, which defines the conditions under which Japan is permitted to exercise the right of collective self-defense, even in the absence of a direct attack on Japan itself, when the nation's survival and the fundamental rights of its people are existentially threatened. In other words, should the "sonritsu kiki jitai" framework be invoked, the Japan Self-Defense Forces would be authorized to employ force around Taiwan in the form of joint operations with U.S. forces, a scenario that directly conflicts with the "One China" principle, which China regards as its most sensitive core interest.
The Chinese government responded swiftly and forcefully to Takaichi's remarks, characterizing the Japanese cabinet as "a dangerous political force blatantly interfering in the Taiwan issue" and mobilizing a hard-line response across diplomatic, media, and public opinion fronts. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the remarks through a series of briefings, stating that "Japan's leader is interfering in the Taiwan issue with dangerous rhetoric, which constitutes a serious challenge to China's sovereignty and territorial integrity." State-run media outlets, including the Global Times, repeatedly issued military and security warnings, asserting that "if Japan takes the initiative to militarily intervene in a Taiwan Strait conflict, it will be playing with fire and will ultimately be consumed by the flames."1) Notably, Xue Jian (薛劍), China's Consul General in Osaka, used threatening language targeting Prime Minister Takaichi on social media, prompting widespread calls in Japan for his removal, with the remarks being characterized as "a de facto personal attack."
China's pushback extended well beyond words, spilling over into the economic and social domains. The Chinese government applied pressure tantamount to "unofficial export controls" through intensified customs inspections and deliberate delays in customs clearance for select Japanese semiconductor materials and battery-related raw materials, while additional inspections on Japanese seafood and food products and moves to restrict imports at the local government level were also noted. At the same time, China's cultural and tourism authorities directed travel agencies to reduce group tour visa applications to Japan by approximately 40 percent and effectively froze negotiations on new routes and flight increases for Japan-bound airlines, dealing a significant blow to the tourism and aviation sectors. In December 2025 alone, more than 1,900 flights between China and Japan were cancelled, with more than 2,000 additional cancellations scheduled for January 2026, bringing the post-COVID rebound in people-to-people exchanges between the two countries to an abrupt halt.2)
What Takaichi's remarks ultimately revealed is that Japanese politics has thrown into sharper relief the structural tensions in China-Japan relations by extending "alliance-first" priorities to the Taiwan Strait issue. Since former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo (安倍晋三) stated in 2021 that "a Taiwan contingency is a contingency for Japan, and by extension, a contingency for the U.S.-Japan alliance," the view that Taiwan's defense constitutes an extension of Japan's own security has gained increasing traction within Japan's conservative political circles, and Takaichi has effectively elevated this view into an official statement by a sitting prime minister. As a result, the bilateral conflict has moved beyond mere friction over specific issues and is escalating into a structural confrontation in which the operational logic of the U.S.-Japan alliance and China's core interests are on a direct collision course, further amplified by controversy at home and abroad over the nature and extent of Japan's potential involvement in a future Taiwan contingency.
These developments carry direct implications for South Korea and other East Asian states as well. The moment Japan designates a Taiwan contingency as a "sonritsu kiki jitai," the U.S.-Japan alliance would effectively expand its operational space to encompass the Taiwan Strait as a collective defense framework, leaving China with little choice but to intensify its military and diplomatic responses, perceiving this as "the emergence of a second collective security system." In this process, while the ROK-U.S. alliance, the U.S.-Japan alliance, and the trilateral ROK-U.S.-Japan security cooperation framework become increasingly interlinked through the Taiwan issue, South Korea risks seeing its autonomous policy space progressively narrowed. Ultimately, the China-Japan conflict triggered by Takaichi's remarks can be seen not as a "regionalization of the Taiwan issue," but as a harbinger of a wholesale realignment of the security order across East Asia. -
Japan's foreign and security policy has been built around the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, concluded simultaneously with the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, with Article 6 of the revised 1960 U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, the so-called "Far East Clause," stipulating that U.S. forces may station troops and maintain facilities in and around Japan to maintain peace and security in the Far East. Since the Cold War era, the Japanese government has broadly interpreted the scope of this "Far East" to encompass key strategic outposts across the western Pacific, including the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan, and the Philippines, thereby providing the legal and political basis for the U.S.-Japan alliance to effectively function as a security umbrella covering the entire First Island Chain. This structure not only persisted after the end of the Cold War, but the geographic and functional scope of the U.S.-Japan alliance was further expanded from the 2010s onward through the Abe government's revision of security legislation and its pursuit of "proactive pacifism."
In particular, the 2015 revision of Japan's security legislation marked a pivotal shift, as Japan's partial recognition of the right of collective self-defense transformed the U.S.-Japan alliance from a framework centered on "base provision" to one centered on "joint operations." The 2022 revision of the National Security Strategy formalized Japan's possession of "counterstrike capabilities," that is, the capability to strike enemy bases, laying the legal groundwork for Japan to participate in offensive military operations alongside U.S. forces. Against this backdrop, the national security strategy of the second Trump administration under President Donald J. Trump, released in December 2025, identified "deterrence by denial" in Taiwan and along the First Island Chain as a core objective for the alliance as a whole, with Japan embracing this approach wholeheartedly as it pursues an alliance realignment premised on an expanded role in a Taiwan contingency. Prime Minister Takaichi's "sonritsu kiki jitai" remarks can thus be assessed as having elevated the geographic and functional expansion of the U.S.-Japan alliance, a trajectory set in motion by the Abe government, from the level of domestic political rhetoric to a concrete legal option.
Nevertheless, upon the normalization of China-Japan diplomatic relations in 1972, Japan expressed in the joint statement that it "fully understands and respects (理解し尊重する) China's position that the Government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legal government of China and that Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory," and has to this day refrained from officially denying the so-called "One China" principle. While maintaining its relationship with Taiwan as an "unofficial, working-level relationship," the Japanese government has continued to expand economic and cultural cooperation, and has more recently been moving to strengthen ties with Taiwan in the areas of semiconductors, advanced technology, and supply chains. This combination of ambiguous diplomatic rhetoric and substantive policy engagement reflects Japan's fundamentally dual-track posture on the Taiwan issue, one aimed at managing both "alliance obligations" and "relations with China" simultaneously.
As U.S.-China strategic competition intensifies, this dual-track posture increasingly emerges as a structural vulnerability in Japan's foreign and security policy. The more Japan strengthens deterrence in the Taiwan Strait and enhances joint responses in the East and South China Seas through the U.S.-Japan alliance, the more China comes to regard Japan as "a forward-deployed base and potential intervening force" for the United States, thereby ratcheting up military, diplomatic, and economic pressure. Conversely, the more Japan pursues stability in China-Japan relations and deeper economic cooperation, the more doubts arise about the depth of U.S.-Japan alliance integration, creating a structurally constraining dynamic. Since the 2010 Senkaku Islands (尖閣諸島, known in China as the Diaoyu Islands) clash, Japan has pursued a "dual strategy" of reaffirming the "One China" principle on one hand while expanding countermeasures against China on the other, including a broader interpretation of collective self-defense and the strengthening of defense capabilities in the Nansei (南西) Islands. In the 2020s, however, as tensions surrounding the Taiwan Strait have risen to increasingly unpredictable levels and shifts in Taiwan's domestic politics and U.S.-China relations have intersected, an environment has emerged in which Japan can no longer sustain strategic ambiguity.
The Takaichi government took office in October 2025 at the intersection of these dilemmas. Even before taking office, Prime Minister Takaichi had visited Taiwan, met with President Lai Ching-te (賴清德), and repeatedly invoked former Prime Minister Abe's assertion that "a Taiwan contingency is a contingency for Japan," cementing her image as a "pro-Taiwan, hawkish toward China" politician. As a result, Japan's traditional strategy of strengthening the U.S.-Japan alliance framework while maintaining economic interdependence with China has become increasingly fraught with internal tension, and Takaichi's remarks can be seen as a symbolic event that emerged precisely at the point where these structural contradictions came to a head. Ultimately, the dilemma facing Japanese diplomacy is evolving beyond a simple choice between "security or economy" into a deeper recognition that the balance between Japan's strategic identity, forged within the postwar San Francisco framework and oriented toward maintaining a U.S.-led international order, and its commitments to the U.S.-Japan alliance and the regional order are being fundamentally shaken. -
Following Takaichi's remarks, China's response has unfolded in a direction that goes beyond diplomatic and economic sanctions, systematically undermining Japan's legitimacy through a campaign of public opinion manipulation and cognitive warfare bearing the hallmarks of a "History War" (歷史戰).3)
Chinese state-run media and segments of academia have revived the claim that "Ryukyu (琉球, Okinawa) was historically a tributary state (藩屬) that paid tribute to China, and was merely incorporated into Japan through Japanese colonial rule and the U.S.-led San Francisco framework, making it difficult to regard it as legitimately Japanese territory." This discourse, which had briefly surfaced in the early 2010s before fading from view, has reemerged following Takaichi's remarks through more organized research programs, such as the establishment of Ryukyu Studies centers at universities in Fujian (福建), and propaganda campaigns, and is being deployed as a strategy to erode the perceived legitimacy of Japan's territorial sovereignty under the banner of "historical justice" and "reassessment of the postwar order."
There is a strategic calculation behind China's active deployment of this historical discourse. Okinawa and the surrounding Southwest Islands are precisely the key logistical and operational hubs for U.S. force deployment and U.S.-Japan joint operations in the event of a Taiwan contingency. Over 70 percent of U.S. military facilities and areas in Japan are concentrated in Okinawa, including facilities associated with the Seventh Fleet, the Marine Expeditionary Force, air power assets, and missile defense systems, making Okinawa the de facto operational base for contingencies in the Taiwan Strait and the East China Sea. China's questioning of Okinawa's status and identity must therefore be understood not merely as a symbolic denial of Japan's territorial sovereignty, but as a "strategic History War" aimed at undermining the frontline foundations of the U.S.-Japan alliance on psychological, political, and legal fronts.
China frames this through the language of "historical legitimacy." The Chinese argument proceeds as follows. The Ryukyu Kingdom had a tributary relationship with the Ming and Qing dynasties. After World War II, the United States returned Okinawa to Japan under the San Francisco Peace Treaty, with the actual reversion occurring in 1972. However, since China was not a party to the treaty at the time, China portrays this as an "inequitable postwar order" that excluded Chinese sacrifices and rights. These claims are not merely aimed at Japan's sovereignty over Okinawa, but have the effect of calling into question the legitimacy of the entire U.S.-led San Francisco framework and the "legitimacy of the postwar international order." China is currently pursuing a parallel strategy that links the Senkaku Islands, Taiwan, and the South China Sea to undermine the legal and historical foundations of the U.S.-centered order, while advancing its own notion of "historical legitimacy" to justify a new vision for regional order.
The ripple effects of this History War have significant potential to create subtle fractures in Japan's domestic politics and society. Segments of Okinawa's resident communities harbor deep distrust and fatigue toward the central government over the concentration of U.S. military bases and the associated accidents, crimes, and environmental pollution, with a persistent sense that the U.S.-Japan security framework constitutes an obstacle to local autonomy and development. China is waging information and psychological warfare by leveraging social media, informal exchange channels, and online spaces to spread content that stokes feelings of "Ryukyuan identity" and grievance, with the aim of deepening public opinion divisions within Japan and amplifying anti-American and anti-base sentiment.4) In particular, the Takaichi government's hard-line security posture and its policies to reorganize and reinforce bases in Okinawa risk fueling local backlash, which China seeks to exploit immediately in its propaganda campaign to project an image of "Japan's return to militarism" onto the international stage.
As this History War is directly tied to Japan's historical image, it signals that the competition between China and Japan is transitioning beyond mere security and economic conflict into a comprehensive struggle for hegemony over "memory and legitimacy." China is intensifying international pressure on Japan by raising the "enemy state clauses" issue in multilateral forums such as the United Nations to challenge Japan's postwar status, and by amplifying narratives that invoke the history of colonial rule and wars of aggression. Chinese President Xi Jinping's (習近平) remarks at the China-South Korea summit held in January 2026, that "(the two countries) must stand firmly on the right side of history and make the correct strategic choices," can also be understood in this context. Ultimately, Prime Minister Takaichi's "sonritsu kiki jitai" remarks served as a catalyst for the full-scale reactivation of this History War and the broader battle of narratives, and can be assessed as a structural event that transcends a single diplomatic controversy, insofar as it has opened a new front in the long-term strategic competition between China and Japan. -
The China-Japan conflict of 2025-2026, triggered by Takaichi's remarks, is not a simple bilateral political clash, but a symbolic event that reveals how the three axes of the San Francisco framework, the U.S.-Japan alliance, and the Taiwan Strait are being realigned within the context of U.S.-China strategic competition. While Japan has publicly declared its willingness to engage on the Taiwan issue under the banner of the U.S.-Japan alliance and a values-based alliance, China has responded by activating a "hybrid response package" combining economic retaliation, travel restrictions, massive flight cancellations, and the History War, exploiting the vulnerabilities of the alliance structure. Amid these developments, South Korea must soberly analyze the impact that the U.S.-Japan alliance and the China-Japan confrontation will have on the Korean Peninsula's security environment, even as it remains within the framework of the ROK-U.S. alliance.
Above all, maintaining "strategic ambiguity" rather than "strategic clarity" appears to be the realistic choice for South Korea in its approach to the Taiwan issue at this stage. While the ROK-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty provides for mutual defense against armed attacks on the Korean Peninsula and in the Pacific region, whether South Korea would automatically intervene in a Taiwan contingency remains open to interpretation, and Article 6 of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty is not directly linked to South Korea's treaty obligations. Accordingly, while South Korea should comprehensively analyze the military scenarios surrounding a Taiwan Strait contingency as well as the non-military ripple effects, including economic, energy, and supply chain shocks, and crises involving refugees, maritime traffic, and cybersecurity, it would be advisable to refrain from making premature commitments to early intervention on the Taiwan issue. At the same time, it is necessary to conduct preliminary policy reviews on how the scope and limits of ROK-U.S.-Japan security cooperation, intelligence sharing and missile defense cooperation, and questions of rear-area support and base access could be connected to a Taiwan contingency.
Second, South Korea must closely monitor the medium- and long-term ramifications of changes in Japan's security policy and carefully calibrate their interaction with South Korea's own foreign and security strategy. Japan is currently seeking to build a new multilateral security framework, the so-called "Asian NATO" concept, while working to establish a Japan-centered security order in the Indo-Pacific region. Should Japan, invoking the "sonritsu kiki jitai" concept, proceed to deploy the Self-Defense Forces and exercise collective self-defense in a Taiwan contingency, this could restructure the entire Northeast Asian security landscape into an interlocked deterrence framework centered on the Taiwan Strait, leading to a concentration of military activities involving U.S.-China, U.S.-Japan, and ROK-U.S.-Japan forces around the Korean Peninsula. These changes would simultaneously present South Korea with both new constraints and new opportunities in its strategic environment. Managing relations with China and securing autonomy on the Taiwan issue may become more difficult, but room may also open up to expand cooperation options in missile defense, protection of sea lines of communication, and joint development of advanced weapons systems under the ROK-U.S.-Japan security cooperation framework. South Korea needs to establish, at an early stage, a national-level strategic guideline on how to strike the right balance between fulfilling alliance obligations and preserving "diplomatic autonomy."
Third, the escalating History War between China and Japan carries important implications for South Korea as well. As China and Japan weaponize historical issues, including Ryukyu (Okinawa), the enemy state clauses, postwar responsibility, and colonial rule, as tools of foreign and security strategy, South Korea must strengthen its foundation of dispassionate and objective historical research, setting aside emotional and moralistic approaches, in order to build its narrative-shaping capacity. When Japan's historical and security discourse attempts to legitimize itself through the language of the U.S.-Japan alliance and a values-based alliance, South Korea must broaden its space to assert its own voice amid competition among the United States, China, and Japan by offering a distinctive vision and historical perspective centered on a peaceful order in Northeast Asia and the principles of human rights and the rule of law. At the same time, given that China's History War may also clash with South Korea's own historical consciousness, and that competition over historical legitimacy could reemerge in ways similar to the Northeast Project, a comprehensive strategy is needed to address situations where historical disputes become directly entangled with foreign and security policy agendas.
Ultimately, the sequence of events that has unfolded following Takaichi's remarks lays bare a cross-section of East Asian realpolitik in which Japan's strategic contradictions, China's challenge to the established systemic and historical order, and the United States' alliance realignment are intricately intertwined. Rather than reacting to short-term public opinion and emotion amid this unstable international order, South Korea must ground itself in the ROK-U.S. alliance while developing scenario-based frameworks and diversifying its policy options in anticipation of the medium- and long-term impact that the Taiwan issue, the China-Japan conflict, and the History War will have on the Korean Peninsula and the broader regional order. The imperative to firmly uphold its alliance commitments while independently shaping a balanced regional order has grown heavier, and it is precisely at this juncture that the core test of Northeast Asian diplomacy in 2026 is taking shape.
| Takaichi's Remarks and the Deterioration of China-Japan Relations
| The Post-War U.S.-Japan Alliance and the Fracturing of China-Japan Relations
| The Escalating "History War" Between China and Japan
| Implications and Policy Directions for South Korea
1) 송현서, “중국, 또 ‘막말 대잔치’…“日 다카이치 총리, 당나귀에 머리 맞았나”,” 『서울신문』 2025년 11월 13일, <https://m.nownews.seoul.co.kr/news/international/otherCountry/2025/11/13/20251113601043> (검색일: 2026년 1월 5일).
2) 이기욱, “‘中, 희토류 日수출허가 평소보다 지연’… 2010년 무역충돌 재연 우려,” 『동아일보』 2025년 12월 8일, <https://www.donga.com/news/Inter/article/all/20251208/132918344/2> (검색일: 2026년 1월 5일).
3) The term "History War" (歷史戰) first emerged in the 1990s among Japan's conservative right-wing forces, including the Sankei Shimbun (産経新聞), in the context of debates surrounding the issue of Japanese military "comfort women." Former Prime Minister Abe in particular frequently stated after his resignation in 2020 that "we must no longer allow ourselves to be pushed back in the History War against China and South Korea," and discussions of the "History War" subsequently gained considerable momentum within the Liberal Democratic Party, centered on the former Abe faction (安倍派).
4) 김기범, “다카이치 대만 발언 이후 중국 언론서 오키나와 병합 다룬 기사 20배 늘었다,” 『경향신문』 2025년 12월 28일, <https://www.khan.co.kr/article/202512281530011> (검색일: 2026년 1월 5일).
※ The contents published on 'Sejong Focus' are personal opinions of the author and do not represent the official views of Sejong Institue
