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It started a few days ago, when the Japanese Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, declared before parliament that Chinese aggression against Taiwan could constitute a “survival threat situation”, the legal formula that would allow Tokyo to use force in support of its allies. With his words, he not only broke the “strategic ambiguity” maintained by Japan for decades, he thus opened a Pandora’s box that at this time hangs on a very thin line. The explosion. As we said, the Takaichi gesturewhich broke with decades of caution and “strategic ambiguity” around the Taiwanese issue, was interpreted by Beijing as a direct provocation and a sign that the new Japanese government was willing to align itself more openly with Washington and Taipei in the most sensitive scenario in the Asia-Pacific. The Chinese reaction It was immediate: summoned the Japanese ambassador with unusually harsh language, issued official editorials calling Takaichi’s words “fundamentally evil” and warned that any Japanese intervention would be a failure destined to turn “the entire country into a battlefield.” That aggressive turnmore typical of moments of maximum tension than of routine diplomacy, announced that Beijing was not willing to leave a change of position that affects one of its vital interests unanswered. The military front is activated. While charging politically against Tokyo, China opened a second front in the military terrain. The most “showy”: the arrival of its coast guard ships on a patrol mission within the waters of the Senkaku Islands (administered by Japan but claimed by China like Diaoyu), one more step in a theater where both countries have been competing for years, but whose meaning is different in the midst of a diplomatic clash. Simultaneously, the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense detected thirty aircraftseven ships and one official Chinese vessel operating around the island in just 24 hours, with maps showing drones approaching dangerously close to Yonaguni, the Japanese island located just 110 kilometers from the Taiwanese coast. Chinese patrol with the Senkaku in the background The red line. China it takes months combining these “joint patrols” with intrusive flights in the Taiwanese ADIZ as part of a pressure strategy persistent, but do it right after Takaichi’s statements He turned these maneuvers into a message addressed to Tokyo as well as Taipei. For Japan, see military drones Chinese bordering its southernmost islands is a warning that any clash in the Taiwan Strait would have direct repercussions on its territory, a reminder that its security is inexorably linked to the future of the self-governed island. After using water cannon to turn back a flotilla of Taiwanese fishing and coast guard vessels in 2012, the Japanese Coast Guard has shown increasing vigilance in defending the waters surrounding the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. In its territorial claim, Japan’s maritime border covers about 27 kilometers around the archipelago. The economic front. The second line of Chinese response came through economic waya tool that Beijing has perfected in previous disputes with Australia, South Korea or the United States. First issued a travel notice to its citizens warning of the “increased risks” in Japan, then urged reconsider studies in the country, directly affecting more than 123,000 Chinese students registered in Japanese centers, and then allowed the main Chinese airlines will refund free of charge tickets to Japan. This sequence, apparently dispersed, has a crystal clear logic: in a country where Chinese visitors represent nearly a quarter of total tourism, a diplomatic warning is enough to shake an entire sector. The Japanese stock market showed it: Shiseido, Uniqlo, Isetan-Mitsukoshi, Takashimaya and the airlines JAL and ANA suffered drops of between 5 and 12%, while Oriental Land, operator of Tokyo Disney Resort, fell almost 6%. Extra ball. It does not seem, therefore, that we are facing a simple stock market fluctuation, but rather the sign that a giant economic actor can, with a phrase on an official website, compromise vital income for a neighboring country and remind it of the asymmetry of economic power between the two. As I remembered French geopolitical analyst Arnaud Bertrand to put the situation in perspective, from China’s point of view, it is as if Macron officially announced that the French army would militarily defend Catalonia from Spain, just after the anniversary of Napoleon’s defeat and the end of the French occupation of Spain. In other words, a kind of disproportionate provocation if, in addition, we take into account that it occurs shortly after the 80th anniversary of the end of the japanese colonial occupation from Taiwan and Second World War. Sanae Takaichi The political dimension. Beyond tourism and education, Bloomberg told A few hours ago, Beijing allowed accounts affiliated with its media apparatus to announce that it was “fully prepared for substantive retaliation.” The insinuations range from targeted sanctions even trade restrictionssuspension of diplomatic contacts or symbolic military measures, a repertoire that China already applied harshly against South Korea after the deployment of the THAAD anti-missile system in 2017. That historical reference did not go unnoticed: then, the tourist boycott and the pressure on South Korean companies took away 0.4 points to GDP of the country, a figure strong enough to serve as a warning. For Tokyo, the threat does not come in a vacuum: China is its main business partner and supplier of critical materialsan Achilles heel that Beijing knows and exploits when you need mark limits. However, the Chinese offensive aims beyond Japanese punishment: it also seeks to deter other governments (particularly European) to speak out on Taiwan, after the recent gesture of the EU by welcoming a Taiwanese vice president for the first time in decades. And Taiwan in the center. we have been counting during the year. The element that gives coherence to this crisis is the Taiwanese issue. For Beijing, unification is an imperative political and militaryand any mention of the possibility of Japan intervening constitutes a red line. For Tokyo, geographical proximity turns any Chinese invasion into an existential threat: The fall of Taiwan could place the Chinese navy one step away from the sea … Read more