Can Japan say, "We will protect Taiwan," Kan?
Hello. I'm Mike, a lawyer living in Hong Kong.
ON THE 16TH (US LOCAL TIME), KAN RUSHED TO THE US, WHERE THE US-JAPAN SUMMIT AND THE JOINT STATEMENT WERE ANNOUNCED. NO DINNER. NO DINNER. I CAN'T HELP BUT WONDER IF KAN IS IN GOOD HEALTH AS HE IS ABOUT TO ENTER THE LATE STAGE OF OLD AGE. IT SEEMS THAT MR. BIDEN WENT HOME AND SPENT THE WEEKEND.
There are a lot of things I want to talk about in this visit to the US and the joint statement, but I would like to talk about Taiwan the most.
First of all, I would like to say that Taiwan is a very important "country" for Japan. We have not forgotten that Taiwan was the first country to help us after the Tohoku earthquake. I have no objection to the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait. That is the basic premise.
Then, just for the sake of clarity, China is the People's Republic of China and Taiwan is the Republic of China. However, China considers Taiwan to be part of China and does not recognize it as an independent country. Internationally, there are currently 15 countries that recognize Taiwan as an independent country, most of which are small countries in Central America or the Pacific. In addition, the number of countries that have recognized Taiwan as an independent country has decreased by seven in the past five years. I had a chance to talk to the ambassador of Panama to Japan, who broke off diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 2017, and he told me that as soon as they started diplomatic relations with China, they started receiving a lot of aid from China. Both Japan and the US have severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
This visit to America. For example, Brother Biden called me into his office and said, "You know we've been running this territory for a while now, but recently the people from the next town over have gained power and are trying to take it over. If we don't do something, we'll come into conflict with them. You should write a letter to the neighbours saying that you will follow us for the rest of your life and declare it to them too." And that's how this joint statement came about.
Has Japan crossed the Rubicon River?
From the post-war period to the present day, the world revolves around the United States. It is called the world's police force and has the highest GDP in the world. However, things are suddenly looking bleak here. First of all, the US is changing its direction to put its own country first and quitting its role as the world's police. This has been accelerated by Trump's four-year reign at the top of the US with the slogan "Make America Great Again". Meanwhile, China is rapidly gaining economic power and is expected to overtake the US in GDP in a few years time. Naturally, it is China that is going to replace the US as the world's dominant power, and it is using its economic power to sometimes forcefully increase the number of pro-China countries.
Hong Kong has also been forcefully drawn into China. Not so long ago, at least until the first half of 2019, people in Hong Kong were free to make their point to the Hong Kong government. There were some skirmishes between protesters and police, but that's acceptable in a democracy, and it was a very gentlemanly demonstration, with two million people marching in an orderly fashion to make their case to the government. The situation changed in late 2019, when the government made it clear that it would use force to quell the protests. The clashes became more and more violent, and in the end many students holed up in the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and after a struggle that resembled the Yasuda Auditorium incident, the students surrendered. After that, demonstrations were banned due to the accidental corona, people refrained from going out, and before long, the National Security Law was passed, and Hong Kong was completely dominated by China in terms of speech and politics.
For better or worse, Hong Kong is now at peace. But in the second half of 2019, when the struggle was at its most tense, Hong Kong people were asking democracies like the US and Japan to support and help Hong Kong people, and China was ready to intervene in Hong Kong by force at any time, with troops on standby at the Hong Kong border. This was a time when Hong Kong was seriously considering that it might become the stage for a proxy war between China and the United States.
For China, two lovely children (Hong Kong and Taiwan) who live far away from each other have recently been saying they want to leave home because they have been influenced by bad people who apparently don't agree with them, so I beat up the closer child (Hong Kong) to bring him back to my house to live under the supervision of his parents. They made a lot of noise from a distance, but I ignored them and they quieted down.
Then Taiwan is next. I've always wanted to leave home, but my parents won't let me. I used to think it was OK because I could live far away and they would let me be free, but now I know that one day, like in Hong Kong, they will beat me up and take me back to my parents. My parents were my parents and I hadn't been able to handle it, but I knew that I could handle it if they beat me and brought me back. So I'm starting to think that if they don't listen to me, I'll bring them back even if I have to hit them in the end.
China wants to conquer the world. It has been making steady progress with its One Belt, One Road initiative from Eurasia to Europe and Africa. Its next target is the Pacific sea route to the east. But we have in front of us Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines, all friends of the United States, with whom we do not see eye to eye. These are the countries that stand in the way of China's free passage and domination of the Pacific Ocean (as you can see if you look closely at the map). Japan and the Philippines are independent countries, so we can't touch them, but Taiwan is its own country, so we can enter the Pacific from here. If they don't listen to us, we will beat them. This has already been proven in Hong Kong.
China's situation with Taiwan is similar to that of Hong Kong, but from a geopolitical point of view it is very different. Hong Kong was a purely humanitarian issue for the US. It was a purely humanitarian issue for the US, using force to subdue those who opposed power on the basis of democracy. It may issue condemnations from the outside, but it does not go so far as to use the same force against them. Unless there is another reason behind it. But in the case of Taiwan, if China were to use force to subdue it and free it, it would immediately mean China's entry into the Pacific. The US would like to avoid that. The threat of Chinese socialism coming across the Pacific to the Americas is a threat. But it's not going to stop it on its own, especially now that it's putting its own interests first, so it's going to turn to Japan and Taiwan to do the job. So they called in Japan, their number one disciple, who listens to the US very well, and got a letter of intent from them saying that if there is an armed conflict, they will definitely come over here and fight together, and that they will be the bulwark of the East China Sea.
At the same time, the US also sent an unofficial delegation to Taiwan to convey the same message. The U.S. has now confirmed that Taiwan, Japan and the U.S. will fight together even if China uses force to attack Taiwan.
Well, Japan. This is not a time to be happy about being the first country to be called by the US. Japan was not invited because it is the best friend of the US, but merely as a pawn to strengthen the defence against Chinese expansion in the East China Sea. Maybe that's why they didn't have a dinner party in mind at all.
It's been a long time coming, but now it's time to get down to business. Now that we've made our statement, there's no going back. Yes, the Rubicon River has been crossed. In the event of a split between the Chinese and American camps, Japan will clearly join the American camp and confront China. In the unlikely event that a proxy war between China and the US breaks out in Taiwan, Japan will dispatch its Self-Defense Forces to fight alongside the US in a cynical attempt to win the war (after the Korean War and the Vietnam War, what about the Taiwan War? ). If not, fighter jets will be flying out of Okinawa as they did during the Vietnam War, and China will probably attack the bases there. So far it was Russia (USSR) that was far away, but China and Okinawa are just a stone's throw away.
Japan has always been good at conducting its diplomacy from a neutral position. When wars broke out in the Middle East, we did not send troops on the basis of the Peace Constitution, and when other countries violated human rights, we did not take action, but simply expressed our regret. We have been on good terms with the US and China, and we are generally on good terms with Taiwan and other countries. Last April, we were going to invite President Xi as a guest of honor, saying that we are an ally of the United States. So, if a conflict between China and the United States were to surface in Taiwan, there was a good chance that the important mission of coordinating the two sides would come around from that neutral position. But with this statement, that possibility has disappeared.
If it is such an important and significant statement, why has it not been discussed at all in Japan? Why did you so carelessly travel to the US to issue a statement when Japan's position is so greatly affected? It is outrageous if the statement was made with the petty intention of boosting support through diplomacy in preparation for this year's election.
I'm getting angrier and angrier as I write this. My apologies. See you next time.
