September 4, 2026

Nearly one year into her tenure, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and her cabinet have moved with unusual speed and coordination to treat the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea as a single strategic theater.

What is presented in Tokyo as "concern for regional stability" is, in substance, a systematic effort to amplify a "China threat" narrative, build a cross-sea deterrence chain, loosen postwar legal restraints on the use of force, and assemble a diplomatic bloc that can apply multi-directional pressure on China.

This is no defensive policy tweak, but a calculated move to turn maritime frictions into a political and military tool for Japan's so-called national normalization.

Politically, Tokyo has cemented a highly charged "China threat" storyline. Early in the Takaichi administration, it used bilateral talks with China to voice "grave concerns" over activities near the Diaoyu Islands and stress the "importance" of peace across the Taiwan Strait.

Most consequentially, on November 7, 2025, the prime minister told the Diet that a mainland use of force against Taiwan could constitute a "survival-threatening situation" for Japan — wording that under existing security legislation opens the door to Self-Defense Force involvement in cross-Strait affairs.

While subsequent cabinet statements insisted long-standing policy remained unchanged, they refused to retract the remark, keeping the expanded interpretation on the table while claiming policy continuity.

Militarily, Japan is merging the three seas into one operational framework. It plans to expand its large maritime surveillance drone fleet, accelerate missile deployments on Yonaguni Island — roughly 110 kilometers from Taiwan — and bolster SDF presence across the Nansei Islands.

For the first time as a full member rather than an observer, Japan joined US-Philippine military exercises near the Bashi Channel and in the South China Sea, deploying a P-3C patrol aircraft and later a sizable ground contingent. In April 2026, a Maritime SDF destroyer transited the Taiwan Strait, a move Tokyo had long avoided due to its political sensitivity.

Joint statements with the US and the Philippines repeatedly link "unilateral attempts to change the status quo" in the East and South China Seas to the Taiwan situation.

Legally, Tokyo is rewriting the rules that once constrained its military activity. Revisions to the implementation guidelines for the Three Principles on Transfer of Defense Equipment have in principle opened the door to lethal weapons exports. Discussions on transferring retired Abukuma-class frigates and Type-88 anti-ship missiles to the Philippines illustrate how Japan intends to use this policy opening.

Meanwhile, the "survival-threatening situation" definition is being stretched from a narrow hypothetical to a standing policy space covering Taiwan contingencies. Together, these changes provide domestic legal cover for the SDF to operate farther from Japan's home islands and transfer strike-capable defense systems to partner countries.

Diplomatically, Japan is weaving a web of minilateral arrangements to encircle China. The US-Japan alliance is being recast as the core of a "southern shield", with expanded interceptor production and prioritized defense buildup in the southwestern islands.

Ties with the Philippines have been upgraded to a "special strategic partnership", accompanied by an Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement, radar transfers, generator donations, planned arms exports, and maritime delimitation talks uncomfortably close to waters east of Taiwan.

Similar language opposing "unilateral status quo change" — and in some cases references to the 2016 South China Sea arbitration award — appears in joint statements with France, Poland and other extra-regional states. The pattern is consistent: secure US security backing, use the Philippines as a forward partner, and rally external voices to multiply pressure on China.

This three-sea linkage is not a random policy shift, but a calculated drive anchored in three core strategic goals tied to Japan's long-term pursuit of military and political "normalization".

The first goal is to build a regional balancing architecture to counter China and advance Japan's strategic expansion ambitions. Japan views China's growing comprehensive national strength as a major obstacle to breaking out of a purely regional role, projecting power into far oceans, and completing its decades-long push to become a "normal country".

The widening power gap between the two nations has fueled rising strategic anxiety in Tokyo, compounded by doubts over whether the US will remain a reliable security patron as Washington adjusts its global priorities.

To address this, Tokyo has constructed a three-tiered structure: US security endorsement at the top, Japanese operational leadership in the middle, and frontline partner cooperation from countries like the Philippines at the ground level.

This arrangement allows Japan to avoid confronting China unilaterally while positioning itself as a regional security agenda-setter, exporting defense equipment, shaping rules and amplifying threat narratives to squeeze China's strategic maneuvering room in adjacent waters.

The second goal is to reserve policy space for Japanese military involvement in a potential Taiwan crisis. For decades, external military intervention in cross-Strait affairs was widely seen as an exclusively US matter. Japan's recent policy shifts are moving this paradigm toward joint US-Japan intervention, which would inevitably raise the military cost for China to achieve national reunification.

Japan's missile and intelligence deployments on its southwestern islands already cover the northern approaches to the Taiwan Strait, posing a direct security threat to China.

Meanwhile, folding Taiwan-related issues into Japan-Philippines maritime delimitation talks risks conflating China's internal affairs with ordinary maritime sovereignty disputes, effectively eroding de facto recognition of China's sovereignty over Taiwan.

Closer official contacts between Japan and Taiwan authorities will also embolden "Taiwan independence" separatist forces to take more reckless actions, narrowing the space for peaceful reunification and adding uncertainty to the cross-Strait process.

The third goal is to gain international legitimacy for overseas military expansion and loosen postwar constraints on Japanese militarism. On the global stage, Japan frames SDF deployments as fulfillment of UNCLOS obligations or routine far-seas maritime security missions, attempting to manufacture false legitimacy for its force projection.

Each incremental adjustment to defense laws and operational scope creates new political facts, making further policy revisions easier to advance. Over time, the cumulative effect is to progressively weaken the postwar international constraints imposed on Japanese militarism.

This is the true meaning of Japan's "normalization": not a modest update to its defensive posture, but a gradual erosion of postwar restrictions to pave the way for a more offensive, expansionist security policy and lay the groundwork for a new form of militarism.

Japan's systematic push for three-sea linkage bears clear hallmarks of neo-militarism, and its far-reaching risks should put regional countries and the broader international community on high alert.

These moves follow a familiar and dangerous historical pattern: inflating external threats to justify domestic military buildup, using smaller regional partners as steppingstones for power projection, and treating international legal constraints as barriers to dismantle rather than rules to honor. The risks are neither abstract nor distant.

Linking the three seas into a single security framework significantly multiplies the risk of strategic miscalculation across the region. It also draws extra-regional military forces deeper into East Asian waters, complicating sensitive maritime disputes and undermining efforts to resolve differences through dialogue.

Furthermore, it encourages regional claimant states to internationalize bilateral disputes instead of seeking negotiated solutions through direct consultation. Domestically, it sends a dangerous signal to Japan's right-wing forces that longstanding post-WWII taboos on military expansion can be broken without consequence.

Regional countries and the international community should see through the true nature of Japan's three-sea campaign. Security cooperation built on a fabricated "China threat" narrative, lethal arms transfers and deliberate expansion of the "survival-threatening situation" definition does not contribute to regional peace and stability.

It is, in essence, overseas military expansion disguised under the banner of security cooperation. History has already shown where Japanese militarism leads. The peoples of Asia paid an enormous price for its aggression and expansion in the last century and have no obligation to tolerate its resurgence in a new guise.

China possesses ample means and capabilities to safeguard its national sovereignty, security and development interests. It remains committed to upholding the postwar international order that Japan seeks to hollow out, managing differences through dialogue and consultation where possible, and responding firmly and resolutely where its core interests are threatened.

Tokyo should abandon the illusion that its three-sea linkage strategy will deliver strategic advantages. This path will only lead to heightened regional tension, deepened mutual mistrust, and a heavier security burden on Japan itself.

The responsible course for Japan is to return to the path it once pledged to follow: maintaining a strictly defensive posture, honestly facing its history of aggression, and genuinely respecting the postwar international order, rather than waging a sustained campaign to break free from it.

The author is the director of the Center for International and Regional Studies, National Institute for South China Sea Studies.

Link

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202609/04/WS6a9a6923e4b06d4aa055c62e.html