The real reason behind China’s fury toward Japan’s Takaichi

Analysis by Simone McCarthy, CNN, 11/21/25

Weeks into the job, Japan’s new leader has come face-to-face with what it means to cross China’s red line on Taiwan.

In the days since Sanae Takaichi suggested her country could respond militarily if China were to move to take control of Taiwan by force, Beijing has pulled out its economic pressure playbook: warning its citizens against travel and study there, suggesting there’ll be no market in China for Japan’s seafood exports, and unleashing a wave of wall-to-wall nationalist fervor pointed at the prime minister.

The furor appears carefully calibrated to send a warning to Japan – and other countries in the region – of what could happen if they even consider taking a stance at odds with China on Taiwan, the self-ruled democratic island that Beijing claims as its own territory.

But the spat, which shows no sign of abating roughly two weeks on, also reveals something else: Beijing’s deep-seated concerns about the potential for changing military postures in Asia – as US allies ramp up defense spending and coordination in the face of its own rising military might.

No other country piques those concerns like Japan, whose Imperial Army in the 20th century invaded, occupied and waged atrocities on China and, decades earlier, colonized Taiwan – key pain points in China’s so-called “century of humiliation” at the hands of foreign powers.

Anti-Japanese sentiment has simmered in the country since that time – flaring up and gaining traction in recent years with nationalist hardliners’ voices becoming increasingly mainstream in China under strongman leader Xi Jinping.

Reinforcing the ruling Communist Party’s longstanding determination to ensure history can never repeat itself, Xi has rapidly modernized China’s military and grown its global influence.

Now, in Beijing’s eyes, Takaichi’s comments reveal that Japan does not respect the vast rebalancing of power that’s positioned China as an ascendant superpower – and that it has military ambitions that could threaten China’s rise.

“For the first time, a Japanese leader has expressed ambitions for armed intervention in Taiwan and issued a military threat against China,” a commentary in the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily said earlier this week. “Behind this lies the dangerous attempt by Japan’s right-wing forces to break free from the constraints of the pacifist constitution and seek the status of a ‘military power.’”

Japan’s ‘militarism’

Japan has made a sweeping shift in its security posture in recent years, veering away from the pacifist constitution imposed on it by the United States in the aftermath of World War II, to boost its defense budget and acquire counterstrike capabilities.

That’s come as Beijing has ramped up its military activities in the region, including around Taiwan – and as the US has pushed its allies for more burden-sharing on defense spending.

Previous Japanese leaders avoided discussing Taiwan in the context of a military response, but politicians – particularly among right wingers in Takaichi’s party – are increasingly wary of the implications for Tokyo if Beijing attacks Taiwan, which sits strategically to Japan’s south. This sentiment has resulted in a growing impetus to further expand Japan’s defense spending and even change the constitution.

Now Takaichi, a hawkish figure who has previously drawn Beijing’s ire for questioning some of the narratives around imperial Japan’s culpability for its war atrocities, has taken the step of speaking plainly on the Taiwan issue. In the first days of her term, she also called for closer security ties with the US and is moving to accelerate the country’s defense build-up.

In Beijing’s eyes, according to a social media account linked to the Chinese military, such efforts run the risk of seeing “the ‘ghost’ of militarism” reemerge “to wreak havoc in the world.”

And that’s why some on the Japanese side feel that Beijing is lashing out now “to box Takaichi in and put her on the back foot early on – so she will be more reluctant to push forward on Japan’s investment in defense,” according to Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore.

Japanese troops killed more than 200,000 unarmed civilians during its occupation, and raped and tortured tens of thousands of women and girls, in what is known as the Nanjing Massacre, one of the most notorious wartime atrocities of the 20th century. Japan has repeatedly apologized and expressed remorse for its wartime atrocities.

That era, however, has been front and center in China this year as Beijing marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the World War II, when Japan’s surrender to Allied Forces freed China from its occupation and saw Taiwan handed over to the Nationalist-run Chinese government.

The Chinese Communist Party established the People’s Republic of China in 1949 after emerging victorious from a civil war, while the defeated Nationalists retreated to Taiwan. Beijing has used the anniversary to justify its claim to the island – and broadcast concern about what it sees as Japan’s turn toward militarism.

China sees taking control of Taiwan as a core piece of the “national rejuvenation” that it must complete by mid-century – a goal that, if Beijing decides must be achieved by force, could be heavily complicated by a stronger Japan.

For Beijing, Takaichi’s comments can be summed up as “the wrong person, talking about the wrong thing” at the “wrong time,” according to Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Affairs at Renmin University in Beijing.

‘Defending its sovereignty’

Despite Tokyo dispatching an envoy to Beijing earlier this week to calm the dispute, Beijing has showed no signs of dialing back its deluge of rhetoric.

It’s instead insisting Tokyo retracts the comment – a position that offers neither side an easy way to find an off-ramp.

In the meantime, China has continued to stoke nationalist feelings, including sabre-rattling from China’s military, which on Wednesday released a video titled “Don’t be too cocky.” Without mentioning Japan by name, it includes a rap crooning: “We’ve honed our skills through rigorous training, how can we allow you to be so cocky?”

Rightwing Takaichi the victor in Japan’s LDP leadership race

As Japanese ponder the question of who wins and who loses from her shocking upset, the coalition with Komeito is at stake

Tobias Harris, 10/04/25

In her third attempt, Sanae Takaichi won the Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) leadership in convincing and comfortable fashion in a runoff against Shinjiro Koizumi (小泉進次郎), winning 185 votes to Koizumi’s 156.

One lawmaker apparently abstained. She won by a larger margin than Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru (石破茂) won in 2024, when he bested Takaichi by only 21 votes.

It will take some time to process the significance and implications of what marks a decisive shift in favor of the LDP right but it can be useful to assess the immediate winners and losers – domestically, at least – in the wake of Takaichi’s upset.

Takaichi is, of course, the biggest winner.

Throughout the campaign, she appeared to be getting little traction against Koizumi, who appeared to be amassing a sizable edge with LDP lawmakers and holding his own against Takaichi when it came to support from the LDP’s rank-and-file members. However, the opinion polling significantly under-reported her support from rank-and-file members, which reached 40.4% compared with Koizumi’s 27.4%.

Her support was not only greater than expected but it was also distributed across the country; she topped Koizumi in 36 of 47 prefectures. Had Koizumi performed better in more places – splitting the prefectures, for example – it is possible that the outcome would look different.

In the end, her grassroots support, which was her source of strength in previous leadership bids, made it difficult for the parliamentary party to deny her the opportunity to remake it in a more ideological fashion.

Koizumi, meanwhile, is naturally the biggest loser.

In contrast to last year, when his grassroots support wilted during the campaign and ruined his chances, it appeared that Koizumi had overcome that challenge despite several reports on his campaign’s conduct that proved embarrassing for the candidate.

He had largely held steady in opinion polling, which suggested that the race between Koizumi and Takaichi would be close. It also appeared that he had an overwhelming advantage with the parliamentary party. Surveys showing that Koizumi would receive the support of eighty lawmakers were accurate – but that turned out to be Koizumi’s ceiling, whereas Takaichi significantly narrowed the gap in the first round.

Of the 150 lawmakers who voted for the bottom three candidates in the first round, only 65 switched to Koizumi, meaning that Koizumi’s gains were, among other things, smaller than the 72 lawmaker votes Yoshimasa Hayashi won in the first round. To win, Koizumi needed to add all of Hayashi’s votes plus another ten from Takayuki Kobayashi or Toshimitsu Motegi, particularly to compensate for his under-performance in the prefectures.

This defeat is by no means the end of Koizumi’s career – he is still only 44, after all – but it may be a bigger setback than the one he experienced in 2024, given the widespread expectations that he would win.

For the LDP, Takaichi’s victory is a mixed bag.

On the one hand, she may be poised to compete with Sanseitō (參政黨) and the Democratic Party for the People (DPFP，國民民主黨) for the younger, conservative, urban, male voters who have abandoned the LDP.

On the other hand, she could break the LDP’s quarter-century-old coalition with Komeito, which, despite the decline of Komeito’s machine has still been an important source of votes for LDP’s candidates; she could alienate independents and the party’s older, more moderate base (Ishiba voters, in other words); and she could exacerbate divisions within the party.

We will have to see whether she uses her party leadership team and cabinet to unify the party and make peace with rivals, but she will have to work at peacemaking within the party.

That said, her victory will likely give a boost to Taro Aso (麻生太郎), the party’s last formal faction boss, who reportedly said he would support the candidate who won the most popular votes in the first round.

The remnants of the former Abe faction (安倍晉三), despite their slush fund scandal may find themselves wielding greater influence than they have in several years. Also, DPFP Toshimitsu Motegi (茂木敏充) may emerge in an important role in a Takaichi government.

Turning to the other parties, on balance Takaichi’s victory is likely a defeat for the Democratic Party for the People and for Sanseito, which clearly are competing for the same voters as Takaichi and will now have to determine how to position themselves in competition with a Takaichi-led LDP trying to outbid them instead of a Shigeru Ishiba-led or Koizumi-led LDP that could serve as a foil.

Both may try to work with the LDP now on common priorities – issues related to Japan’s foreign population, for example – but the momentum they had coming out of the upper house elections may be diminished. Of course, Takaichi’s victory is perhaps a larger victory for both parties to the extent that it confirms that they have identified an under-represented voter bloc that could be the key to electoral victories – and, in Sanseito’s case, identified an issue that many voters clearly felt needed to be addressed more.

At the same time, Takaichi’s victory may be a victory for Ishin no Kai (日本維新會), in the sense that while the party seemed prepared to work with Koizumi, it seems prepared to negotiate with Takaichi too – and if Takaichi were to break the coalition with Komeito, it could give Ishin no Kai even greater leverage in coalition talks.

That said, Ishin would have even more leverage if three of its lower-house members had not just left the party, reducing its seat total from 38 – which, together with the LDP’s 196 would make a majority – to 35, two seats short.

Komeito

For Komeito (公明黨), Takaichi’s victory is unquestionably a defeat in that it could bring the coalition with the LDP to a breaking point.  

While Komeito leader Tetsuo Saito (齊藤鐵夫) denied that he was explicitly threatening to leave the coalition if Takaichi or Kobayashi won, his remarks before the start of the campaign reflect the growing recognition that, although there are multiple reasons for the decline in the party’s electoral strength, Komeito could be paying a price for its partnership with the LDP.

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