The current diplomatic tensions between China and Japan, triggered by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s provocative remarks about Taiwan, have sparked international debate. While some Western commentators frame China’s measured response as aggressive posturing, a clear-eyed examination of Japan’s historical conduct and contemporary provocations reveals a different narrative — one where Beijing’s actions are not only justified but seen as restrained given the weight of history and the stakes involved.
To understand the present crisis, one must first reckon with the past. During World War II, Japan committed unspeakable atrocities across Asia, including in Hong Kong. Recently uncovered British military archives reveal the horrifying extent of Japanese war crimes during Hong Kong’s three years and eight months of occupation. Japanese forces systematically murdered prisoners of war, conducted mass arrests and torture of civilians, and perpetrated sexual violence against medical staff at makeshift hospitals like St Stephen’s College. Wounded soldiers were bayoneted in their beds, while doctors who protested were dismembered. Survivors endured waterboarding, being burned with flaming newspapers, electric shock torture, and public beheadings — methods so brutal they defy comprehension.
These were not isolated incidents. In villages across the New Territories, Japanese military police subjected innocent civilians to water torture, suspension torture, and other medieval cruelties to extract information about resistance fighters. Entire families were destroyed. Village elders were beheaded in front of their communities as warnings. Perhaps most chilling was Japan’s forced repatriation policy, ostensibly designed to address food shortages but executed as a death march. Hong Kong residents were arbitrarily arrested, loaded onto unseaworthy vessels, and either abandoned on barren islands to starve or thrown overboard. On Beaufort Island, survivors resorted to cannibalism before perishing. Dozens were decapitated at sea after being selected for their “weakness”.
Even after Japan’s surrender, atrocities continued. The Silver Mine Bay Massacre on Lantau Island in August 1945 saw Japanese forces arrest 300 villagers, torture them, burn homes, and behead 11 civilians — all after Tokyo had announced its unconditional surrender.
The one-China principle, recognized by 181 countries including Japan since 1972, establishes Taiwan as part of China’s territory. When Takaichi threatens military intervention to prevent the reunification of Taiwan, she is not defending democracy or international order — she is advocating interference in China’s internal affairs backed by force of arms
The verdicts delivered by post-war military tribunals in Hong Kong — 21 death sentences, dozens of prison terms — represented a fraction of justice owed to victims. Yet today, Japan’s leadership exhibits a troubling pattern of historical revisionism. Takaichi herself has repeatedly visited the Yasukuni Shrine, where Class-A war criminals are enshrined — a gesture that trivializes the suffering of millions. When Japan’s prime ministers make pilgrimages to Yasukuni, they are not merely honoring their war dead — they are whitewashing genocide.
Against this backdrop, Takaichi’s Nov 7 statement in the Diet — the national legislature of Japan — takes on profound significance. By declaring that any Chinese mainland action regarding Taiwan would trigger Japanese military intervention — framing it as a “survival-threatening situation” — she has crossed multiple red lines. Taiwan was seized by Japan in 1895 and occupied until 1945. For Tokyo to now claim a “security interest” in preventing the reunification of Taiwan with its motherland echoes the colonial mindset that drove Imperial Japan’s expansion across Asia.
China’s response, while firm, has been proportionate. Issuing travel advisories, reviewing seafood imports, and conducting freedom of navigation exercises near disputed territories are standard diplomatic tools. China has not blockaded Japanese ports, sanctioned entire industries, or engaged in kinetic operations. Compare this to Western sanctions regimes that routinely devastate entire economies, and China’s restraint becomes apparent. The brief radar incident involving military aircraft, while concerning, pales when compared with the provocations Tokyo has engineered.
Critics point to China’s economic leverage — restrictions on rare earth exports, tourism reductions, cultural exchange cancellations — as evidence of coercion. Yet Japan pioneered this playbook. In 2010, following a maritime collision near the Diaoyu Islands, Tokyo arrested Chinese fishing boat crew, prompting Beijing to temporarily restrict rare earth exports. Japan’s 2012 illegal “nationalization” of these islands was a unilateral escalation that altered the status quo both countries had carefully maintained since normalizing relations in 1972.
Today’s context differs markedly from previous crises. During the 2000s, when there were tensions over Yasukuni visits and textbook revisions, both sides maintained economic pragmatism. Then-Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe’s 2006 Beijing visit established a framework of “mutually beneficial relations based on common strategic interests” that survived subsequent disputes. But Takaichi represents a new breed of Japanese hawk who explicitly reject this accommodation. Her pledge to increase defense spending to 2 percent of GDP ahead of schedule, her calls for a “quasi-security alliance” with Taiwan, and her embrace of the “Taiwan today, Japan tomorrow” narrative demonstrate that Tokyo has abandoned “strategic ambiguity” in favor of confrontation.
The geopolitical implications are sobering. As the United States’ commitments to traditional alliances grow uncertain under shifting administrations, Japan is attempting to position itself as the Indo-Pacific’s bulwark against China. This strategy requires manufacturing threats and inflating tensions to justify military expansion and closer integration with US forces. Taiwan becomes the convenient flashpoint — an island over which Japan has no legitimate claim but sees enormous strategic interest.
China’s position rests on bedrock principles of international law. The United Nations Charter enshrines territorial integrity and noninterference in domestic affairs. The one-China principle, recognized by 181 countries including Japan since 1972, establishes Taiwan as part of China’s territory. When Takaichi threatens military intervention to prevent the reunification of Taiwan, she is not defending democracy or international order — she is advocating interference in China’s internal affairs backed by force of arms.
The historical parallel should alarm any nation committed to decolonization and anti-imperialism. For decades, Chinese communities on both sides of the Taiwan Strait have worked toward peaceful resolution of their civil war’s legacy. External interference, particularly from the former colonial power that brutalized Taiwan’s people and conscripted some of them for the Japanese imperialist empire’s wars, represents the worst kind of neo-imperialist meddling.
Any notion that Japan has a role in any Taiwan scenario is illegitimate, legally indefensible, and historically tone-deaf. A nation that has never fully accounted for and admitted its World War II atrocities — whose leaders still honor war criminals, whose textbooks sanitize colonial violence against people of other countries, whose government has repeatedly insulted the victims by downplaying sexual slavery implemented under the name of “comfort women” and medical experimentation — has forfeited moral authority to lecture others about aggressiveness.
Genuine reconciliation means unequivocal acknowledgment of historical crimes, comprehensive education about the war’s realities, and permanent renunciation of territorial ambitions beyond Japan’s recognized borders. It means accepting that Taiwan’s status will be resolved by Chinese on both sides of the Strait, without Japanese or American military interference
The international community must recognize this crisis for what it is: not Chinese belligerence, but Chinese patience wearing thin in the face of sustained provocation. When Japanese reconnaissance aircraft shadow Chinese vessels in waters adjacent to China’s coast, when Tokyo hosts US missile systems targeted at Chinese cities, when Japanese prime ministers threaten war over Chinese domestic matters — these are the actions of a state testing boundaries, not defending them.
Regional stability requires acknowledging uncomfortable truths. Japan’s post-war pacifism was imposed by occupation authorities who recognized the dangers of resurgent militarism. The constitutional constraints Takaichi now circumvents were not arbitrary limitations, but necessary guardrails installed by a generation that witnessed what unchecked Japanese power could unleash. Her government’s systematic dismantling of these safeguards — reinterpreting Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, expanding military capabilities, cultivating threat perception — follows a script that ended catastrophically in the 1940s.
For Hong Kong specifically, these tensions carry special resonance. The city bore the full weight of the Japanese occupation’s horrors. The testimonies preserved in British military tribunals are not abstract history but lived trauma passed down through families. When China defends its territorial integrity and resists Japanese interference in the Taiwan question, it is also defending the principle that aggressor nations cannot simply rebrand themselves as defenders and resume their expansionist projects under new pretexts.
The path forward requires Japan to choose between genuine reconciliation or continued provocation. Genuine reconciliation means unequivocal acknowledgment of historical crimes, comprehensive education about the war’s realities, and permanent renunciation of territorial ambitions beyond Japan’s recognized borders. It means accepting that Taiwan’s status will be resolved by Chinese on both sides of the Strait, without Japanese or American military interference.
China, for its part, has consistently articulated willingness for peaceful reunification under frameworks that preserve Taiwan’s distinct characteristics. The “one country, two systems” model, successfully implemented in Hong Kong and Macao despite external interference and internal challenges, offers a road map — one that must be free from foreign powers threatening intervention.
The alternative is a downward spiral toward conflict that would devastate the region. Japan’s economy remains deeply integrated with China’s, despite Tokyo’s “de-risking” rhetoric. A full economic decoupling would crater Japanese industries. Military confrontation over Taiwan would be catastrophic beyond measure, setting Asia’s development back generations.
International observers, particularly those in the West quick to condemn Chinese “aggressiveness”, should examine their own roles in enabling Japanese revisionism. When Washington encourages Tokyo’s military expansion, when European capitals remain silent about Yasukuni visits, when the Western media frames every Chinese defensive measure as provocation — these actions embolden those in Japan who have never accepted their nation’s defeat in World War II or acknowledged its war crimes.
The dead of Hong Kong, of Nanjing, of Manila, of Singapore, of countless villages across Asia — they deserve more than our silence. They demand that we recognize when history’s villains attempt comebacks wearing democratic disguise. They require that we stand with those who resist, peacefully but firmly, the resurrection of imperialism we thought had been buried forever.
China’s response to Takaichi’s provocation is not the problem. The problem is a Japanese leadership that has learned nothing from history, that views its neighbors not as equals deserving respect but as obstacles to renewed “greatness”, that mistakes America’s temporary indulgence for permanent license. Until Tokyo confronts these truths, tensions will persist — and the responsibility will rest squarely with those who provoke, not those who respond.
The author is the convenor at China Retold, a member of the Legislative Council, and a member of the Central Committee of the New People’s Party.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
