Chinese fighters have targeted Japanese fighters over Okinawa. Japan’s response has been forceful: an archipelago of missiles

The tension between China and Japan has entered a cycle of accelerated deterioration that is no longer limited to diplomatic exchanges or formal protests. In recent weeks, the western Pacific has been the scene of maneuvers increasingly aggressive in which the lines between deterrence, warning and provocation become dangerously blurred.

In the last few hours the most serious episode to date has taken place.

A strategic rivalry. It all started on the weekend, with the lighting with fire control radar of Japanese fighters by J-15 aircraft from the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning near Okinawa, a situation that has set off all the alarms in Tokyo.

The gesture (an act iunequivocally hostile in military parlance) comes at a time when Japan has committed to reinforce its presence in the area around Taiwan and the Ryukyu island chain, a decision that Beijing perceives as a frontal challenge to its regional ambitions. The spiral is worsened by the statements of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, pointing out that an attack on the strait could activate collective defense Japanese, a phrase that China has elevated to the rank of strategic provocation.

Radar, aircraft carriers and a risk. Aerial interaction near Okinawa fu much more an isolated incident: it marked the first time that Japan officially disclosed a radar lock Chinese about their fighters. The Japanese Ministry of Defense registered about a hundred of takeoff and landing operations of Liaoning aircraft, in parallel to two episodes in which the J-15 fixed their firing sensors on Japanese F-15s, forcing the latter country to immediately deploy its own combat air patrols.

China responded accusing Japan of interfering in their exercises, alleging that it had previously delimited the maneuver area. Chinese aircraft carriers and destroyers moved through the Miyako Strait, one of the sea corridors connecting the Pacific to the East China Sea, while official Chinese media they ridiculed Japanese defensive capabilities and warned that any move toward a more active military role “would lead to its own destruction.” The language, accompanied by real maneuvers which combine naval presence, air patrols and psychological pressure, defines an environment where any tactical error could lead to a crisis.

Ryukyu as an advanced shield. Faced with this escalation, Bloomberg told that Japan has undertaken the largest military reconfiguration since the Cold War, articulated around a concept that analysts have called the “missile archipelago”. Yonaguni, the country’s westernmost island, has become a surveillance and electronic warfare outpost just a stone’s throw away. 110 kilometers from Taiwan.

From 2022, after the salvo of Chinese missiles that fell near its coasts, Tokyo has multiplied the installation of anti-aircraft batteries, long-range radars and response units amphibian distributed throughout the Ryukyu chain. The military presence in Kyushu is also increasing, with deployments of F-35s and long-range missiles. At the same time, the government has started to prepare to the local population with briefings that reveal both the magnitude of the challenge and the growing concern among citizens who vividly remember the trauma of the battle of okinawa. The militarization of the region, although supported by a majority of young Japanese, continues awakening misgivings between sectors that fear that a conflict in the strait will turn their islands into the first line of fire.

Fight for historical legitimacy. we have been counting. The operational tension is added to an equally volatile front: the historical dispute. Chinese state media has reactivated narratives that question Japanese sovereignty over the Ryukyu, reinterpreting the postwar period and selectively citing statements of 1945 to present Japan as a nation whose sovereignty “is to be determined.”

Beijing takes advantage of these references to reinforce its claim about the Senkaku and to argue that his view on Taiwan has a historical legitimacy that Japan cannot contradict. Tokyo responds by appealing to Treaty of San Francisco and to the existing international legal framework, but its effort to maintain stability collides with Chinese pressure, which combines repressive diplomacy with psychological operations aimed at local communities. In other words, the historical dispute is not rhetorical: it feeds the perception in Japan that the conflict with China is not temporary, but deeply structural.

Taiwan in the shadows. The link between Japanese security and the fate of Taiwan is today explicit. The doctrine collective defense revised in 2015 allows the country to intervene if Japan’s survival could be compromised, and security analysts they point out that a hypothetical American operation to defend the island would require the use of Japanese bases. Tokyo’s refusal to cooperate with Washington, in such a scenario, would put the alliance itself at risk, making Japanese participation almost inevitable.

China is fully aware of this and concentrates its efforts on fracturing the perception of inevitability, putting political, military and psychological pressure to erode the Japanese margin of decision. On that board, the new electronic warfare units in Yonaguni and the missile batteries distributed throughout the archipelago, they could become, if necessary, key nodes in an integrated attack chain between Japan and the United States, which would make them priority targets for a Chinese offensive in the initial phase.

Uncertainty. The result of these dynamics is a western Pacific that advances towards an area permanent frictionwhere each movement is interpreted as a dress rehearsal and every political statement is magnified as a strategic notice. The air raidsnaval exercises, the militarization of the islands and the historical dispute between great powers converge in a reduced geopolitical spacedensely populated and highly symbolic.

For Japan, the crossroads It is complex: reinforce its defense without reigniting domestic fears about militarism, coordinate with the United States without becoming an automatic target, and respond to China without setting the region on fire. For Beijing, the key is in maintaining the pressureexpand its margin of future action in the Taiwan Strait and fragment the strategic unity of its adversaries.

Image | US Indo-Pacific Command, GoodFon, rhk111, RawPixel

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