Recent escalations in the Taiwan Strait by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army have prompted a joint statement from American president Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga reaffirming the two country’s support of a democratic Taiwan.
This is important because an independent Taiwan acts as a bulwark against Chinese aggression against regional allies, says J. Michael Cole, a Taipei-based senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and the Global Taiwan Institute in Washington, D.C. writing for Inside Policy.
“The willingness of the otherwise careful Suga government to take the unprecedented step of including Taiwan in the joint statement, and in doing so to risk Beijing’s ire, indicates clearly that Tokyo understands the need to deter against China’s attempted takeover of Taiwan — a possibility that can no longer be casually dismissed,” he writes.
While the continued independence of Taiwan is considered crucial by the government and various think tanks, for most regular Japanese citizens the situation is not much more than an abstract concept. More needs to be done, writes Cole, to bring the issue to light.
A Chinese takeover of Taiwan poses significant dangers for Japan, from the risks of blockade, higher costs involved for Japan’s trade with the rest of the world due to altered sea lines of communication, to having a PLA that is positioned within striking distance of contested territory in the East China Sea as well as Japan proper.
Because ultimately, the costs of having to engage China during an attempted takeover is much costlier than the cost of preventing such action in the first place.
