In which /pol/ summarizes a paywalled Financial Times article on the Japanese government making it clear to Japanese companies that it has no intention of antagonizing China over Taiwan island.
Japanese government officials are telling companies they would be “on their own” if they needed to evacuate staff from Taiwan in case of a Chinese attack, according to people familiar with the matter, a message that has hit one of Taiwan’s largest sources of foreign direct investment. Tokyo’s warning highlights the practical and political difficulties for governments and companies in the region of preparing for a potential cross-Strait war. Beijing claims Taiwan as part of its territory, and has threatened to take it by force if Taipei refuses indefinitely to submit to its control.
The US military has been discussing operational plans for such a scenario with its allies, but obtaining political commitments has proven more challenging. The Financial Times reported last week that the Pentagon had pressed Japan and Australia to clarify what role they would play in a US-China war over Taiwan, frustrating Tokyo and Canberra.
Two Japanese officials told the FT that, under the country’s pacifist constitution, its military could only be deployed abroad with approval from a host government. Given that Japan does not recognise Taiwan diplomatically — as with all but 12 countries in the world — there “is no government in Taiwan from our viewpoint”, one of the officials said. They added that China was unlikely to grant the Japanese military approval to conduct evacuations.
Although the Japanese government has never confirmed this line as its official position, companies have been receiving the warnings for about three years, diplomats and corporate executives said. Japanese diplomats told company risk officers that “you are on your own if you put significant assets in Taiwan”, said one person present at one of the conversations.
While the new LDP leader has made noises about modifying Japan’s constitution to permit more aggressive foreign policy and military actions, the longtime ruling party isn’t in a very strong position as a new nationalist party founded in 2020, Sanseito, is rapidly rising thanks to the LDP bowing to Clown World’s demands that it relax Japan’s once-formidable barriers to immigration.
In a recent Kyodo News poll conducted from July 5–6, the party ranked second in proportional representation support, behind only the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). For a group that was initially dismissed as fringe, the rise is both dramatic and deeply concerning to many observers. With rhetoric that echoes Trumpism and European ultranationalism, it has become the most talked-about — and most unsettling — dark horse in Japanese politics.
From Berlin to Washington, from Moscow to Tokyo, the True Right is inevitable.
For decades, Japan’s stagnant wages, aging population and growing inequality have bred quiet despair. Conventional parties like the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) are widely viewed as corrupt, stale and incapable of offering real change. Into this void stepped Sanseito.
The LDP and the CDP are not merely “widely viewed” as “corrupt, stale and incapable of offering real change”, like their counterparts in every Western nation, they are corrupt, stale, and incapable offering real change. Which is why their eventual replacement, one way or another, is inevitable.