BEIJING, January 29. /TASS/. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's statements regarding Taiwan are attempts to drag the US along and transplant NATO-style bloc confrontation thinking into the Asia-Pacific, according to an editorial published Thursday in the Global Times newspaper.
As the Kyodo news agency reported the day before, Takaichi stated during a television program that her government could use military force if, during an emergency off the coast of Taiwan, US troops were attacked and Tokyo was obliged to come to their aid. She justified this, in particular, by citing the need to rescue foreign citizens in Taiwan. "Compared with her remarks last November, Takaichi's latest comments on Taiwan no longer directly speak of Japan's military intervention in the Taiwan Straits. Instead, she has pushed the US to the forefront, attempting to manufacture 'legitimacy' for Japan's potential use of force by binding it to the US-Japan alliance and under the banner of fulfilling alliance obligations. <…> This kind of 'victimhood delusion' rhetoric that forcibly bundles Japan and the US together is, at its core, an extreme amplification of the 'China threat' theory. It attempts to drag the US along and transplant NATO-style bloc confrontation thinking into the Asia-Pacific, revealing a resurgence of militarism and its restless stirring," the daily writes.
For Takaichi, the only way to break out of the current predicament is to return to a correct position on the Taiwan question. "Takaichi should not harbor the illusion of using the US as a shield. As a bilateral military arrangement, the US-Japan alliance can in no way possess legal force that supersedes other countries' sovereignty and territorial integrity enshrined in the UN Charter. Nor can 'alliance obligations' serve as a pretext for Japan to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. Takaichi's attempt to increase leverage in strategic competition with China by binding Japan to the US is doomed to fail," says in the comments.
Takaichi, the newspaper notes, should earnestly abide by the constraints of Japan's domestic laws. "Treating an attack on US forces in the Taiwan Straits as a premise of Japan being ‘unable to stand by’ amounts to forcibly expanding Japan's interpretation of ‘collective self-defense’ under Japan's Legislation for Peace and Security," the periodical writes.
Relations between Beijing and Tokyo worsened after Takaichi told the Japanese parliament in November 2025 that a possible military crisis off the coast of Taiwan would pose an "existential threat" that could force Japan to resort to military force in accordance with its "right to collective self-defense." This provoked strong displeasure in Beijing, which viewed the Japanese prime minister's words as an open threat and interference in its internal affairs.