Prime Minister Takaichi’s landslide election victory on February 8 provides an overwhelming mandate for her to reshape Japan’s national priorities. One of the critical issues she will face will be rising regional tensions with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), following her November 2025 remarks characterizing a Taiwan contingency as a “situation threatening Japan’s survival.” From past historical experience, Japan should be prepared for the prospect that Beijing may escalate a sophisticated campaign of economic and diplomatic coercion, including diplomatic sanctions, supply-chain disruptions via export controls, and further targeted trade pressure designed to deter further Japanese policy alignment with Taiwan.
The current crisis represents the latest evolution in the PRC’s strategy to isolate Japan, including to weaken its links to a democratic “tech stack,” and reinforce a permissive environment for PRC regional hegemony. Beijing’s maneuvers should not be viewed as retaliation for specific remarks; rather, they are strategic moves to test the resilience of Japan’s democratic alliances, and implicitly the foundations of America’s post-WWII security architecture in East Asia, as well as Japan’s tech industrial base. Now endowed with a record LDP supermajority in the National Diet’s lower house, Tokyo must navigate Beijing’s diplomatic and economic pressures in the first island chain.
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