Tensions are rising in China-Japan relations over Taiwan. It started with Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae\u2019s statement to the Diet on November 7, 2025, in which she indicated that Japan could exercise its right of collective self-defense to mobilize the Self-Defense Forces if China used military force against Taiwan. The Chinese government\u2019s response was harsh, saying that Japan had suggested it might intervene in the Taiwan issue with military force. It also emphasized that \u201cTaiwan is an inalienable part of the territory of the People\u2019s Republic of China,\u201d and is pressuring the Japanese prime minister to retract her comments with a clutch of coercive economic measures.<\/p>\n
Among the contested issues in China-Japan relations, Taiwan occupies a unique position. It has remained the most important issue between Japan and China since the founding of the People\u2019s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, while other historical and territorial disputes only emerged after the end of the Cold War. To understand the Japanese government\u2019s position on the Taiwan issue today, we need to look back at the 1972 negotiations on the normalization of diplomatic relations and examine what each country agreed.<\/p>\n
When diplomatic relations between Japan and China were normalized in September 1972, the Japanese government affirmed that the PRC was the \u201csole legal Government\u201d of China. This \u201cterminated\u201d the Treaty of Taipei, and the foreign minister at the time announced that diplomatic relations with Taiwan (Republic of China or ROC), which Japan had maintained since 1952, would be severed in favor of new diplomatic relations with the PRC.<\/p>\n
With the normalization of diplomatic relations between Japan and China, the most significant point of contention was the legal status of Taiwan. China has always asserted that \u201cTaiwan is an inalienable part of the territory of the People\u2019s Republic of China,\u201d but the Japanese government chose not to accept this position.<\/p>\n
The real issue for Japan was how to achieve a compromise with China. When Canada and Italy recognized the PRC in the autumn of 1970, they issued a joint communiqu\u00e9 that used the phrase \u201ctake note\u201d regarding China\u2019s territorial claim over Taiwan. With the Shanghai Communiqu\u00e9 in February 1972, the U.S. \u201cacknowledged\u201d China\u2019s claim, while also stating that it \u201cdoes not challenge that position.\u201d Over time, Beijing was seeking stronger support for its Taiwan claims.<\/p>\n
Japan used the Netherlands\u2019 establishment of diplomatic relations with China in May 1972 as a reference. In the joint communiqu\u00e9 with China, the Netherlands stated that it \u201crespected\u201d the Chinese position and \u201crecognized\u201d the PRC as the sole government of China. Based on this precedent, Japan\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided to negotiate with China by stating that it \u201cunderstands and respects\u201d China\u2019s position.<\/p>\n
However, during negotiations in Beijing in September 1972, China rejected Japan\u2019s wording. Instead, it proposed the following wording: \u201cThe Government of Japan supports China\u2019s position based on the Cairo Declaration.\u201d But endorsing the Cairo Declaration would contradict the Japanese government\u2019s position under the San Francisco Peace Treaty, as it would promise the return of Taiwan and the Penghu Islands to the ROC. The San Francisco Peace Treaty renounced Japan\u2019s sovereignty over Taiwan and the Penghu Islands but did not settle their legal status. As a result, Japan refused to accept the proposed wording.<\/p>\n
The third paragraph of the Japan-China Joint Communiqu\u00e9 was adopted following a revised proposal from Japan. It read: \u201cThe Government of the People\u2019s Republic of China reiterates that Taiwan is an inalienable part of the territory of the People\u2019s Republic of China. The Government of Japan fully understands and respects this stand of the Government of the People\u2019s Republic of China, and it firmly maintains its stand under Article 8 of the Potsdam Proclamation.\u201d According to former Ambassador to the United States Kuriyama Takakazu, who at the time was serving as Director of the Treaty Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and who was involved in drafting the joint communiqu\u00e9, this wording was structured to show indirect support for the Cairo Declaration by referring to the Potsdam Proclamation, which Japan had accepted and which in turn referenced the Cairo Declaration.<\/p>\n
Since then, the Chinese government has continued to assert that, through the normalization of diplomatic relations between Japan and China, Japan has accepted the position that \u201cTaiwan is part of China.\u201d However, this interpretation is not accurate. The Japanese government took the position that while it \u201cunderstands and respects\u201d China\u2019s \u201cOne China\u201d principle, it has never legally recognized China\u2019s territorial claims over Taiwan. Additionally, as Foreign Minister Ohira Masayoshi responded to questions in the Diet in November 1972, the Japanese government has fundamentally positioned the Taiwan issue as an internal Chinese affair, while not explicitly excluding Taiwan from the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty and reserving its position in the event of armed conflict.<\/p>\n
Behind the Japanese government\u2019s decision is the fact that Japan effectively allowed the use of U.S. military bases in Japan in the event of a Taiwan emergency under the Taiwan clause found within the Japan-United States Joint Statement of 1969. Japan has paid careful attention to ensure that the development of relations with China did not weaken the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty.<\/p>\n
Japan and China were not entirely in sync over Taiwan when they normalized diplomatic relations. From this perspective, the normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries was a modus vivendi established without resolving differences in their interpretations of the Taiwan question. During the 1970s, China lacked the ability to invade Taiwan, so these differences in interpretation could be kept on the back-burner. However, China\u2019s growing military power since the last decade is changing the context. The current spat sparked by Takaichi\u2019s comments has shown that the modus vivendi established through the normalization of diplomatic relations is nearing its limit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tensions are rising in China-Japan relations over Taiwan. It started with Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae\u2019s statement to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[176],"tags":[12,462,831,374,8,16546,16547,177,179,180,178,16548],"class_list":["post-20846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics","tag-china","tag-china-japan-relations","tag-diplomacy","tag-east-asia","tag-japan","tag-japan-taiwan-policy","tag-japan-china-joint-communique","tag-japans-politics","tag-japanese-politics","tag-politics","tag-politics-of-japan","tag-sanae-takaichi-foreign-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}