Japan Just Elected Its Most Powerful PM Since WWII – And China Is Panicking | Digging into China

Hi, I'm Dong Shuang. Welcome to Digging into China, where we take a deep dive into what's really happening in China and share some unique insights. The Japanese election is over, and the Liberal Democratic Party led by Sanae Takaichi has won with a commanding majority. Japan is probably the country in the world apart from the United States Yet compared with how much people know about U.S. President Donald Trump's policies, most folks, especially those in mainland China behind the Great Firewall, know very little about what Sanae Takaichi actually stands for. In the mouth of the CCP propaganda machine, Sanae Takaichi has only one policy—reviving Japanese militarism. Sure, if you look closely at her platform, she does want to lift some of the restrictions on Japan's military. But the motivation behind it has absolutely nothing to do with militarism. So if it's not about militarism, what is it about? It's really about Japan's attitude towards China. Japan's geographic position is pretty awkward. It sits right next to China, the world's second-largest economy and the most powerful dictatorship on the planet. Apart from Taiwan, Japan is arguably the second-biggest victim of the CCP's rise. If the CCP ever launches an external invasion, Taiwan comes first, and Japan is very likely second in line. At the same time, because of China's growth, Japan and China have huge trade ties. Economically, the two are quite intertwined. Faced with this awkward spot, caught in the middle, Japan's prime ministers have generally followed one of three foreign policy approaches—cozy up to the CCP, oppose the CCP, or just keep your head down and focus on the economy. The classic pro-CCP example is Yukio Hatoyama. When he was prime minister, he pushed this idea of an East Asian community, hoping to build close ties with culturally similar China and focus on economic cooperation together. It carries a faint echo of the old greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere. Then you have the head-down, economy-first type like Yohide Suga. He basically thought Japan shouldn't bother with the CCP's rise, just mind your own business, live a good life, and let China grow bigger. What's that got to do with me? And then there is the anti-CCP camp, represented by Sanae Takahashi and her mentor Shinzo Abe. Sanae Takahashi has long been seen as the heir to Abenomics and Abe's foreign policy line. Back as early as 2012, Shinzo Abe believed China would inevitably rise, and that as it did, the CCP would export its authoritarian model outward, eventually threatening Japan's very survival. Abe once said that if Japan doesn't treat China as a threat, Japan will pay the price sooner or later. That view looks pretty farsighted now. Of course, for Abe, opposing the CCP and defending against its threat wasn't just empty slogans. Anyone can shout slogans. You need real strategy and skill. Abe's approach combined values and realism. It sounds a bit abstract. But put simply, in Abe's mind, the CCP had to be opposed and contained. But you oppose it intelligently, with technique. And the first technique was to lead with values. Even though Abe was a conservative, he put heavy emphasis on democracy, freedom, rule of law, and human rights as core values. He wanted alliances built on those foundations, and framed the struggle as one between democracy and dictatorship. There was very practical reasoning behind this narrative. Only by establishing that story could Japan pull in the United States, South Korea, Australia, and others to stand together against the CCP threat and share the burden. Otherwise, if you just look at economic interests, why wouldn't the US cooperate with China? Why wouldn't Australia? Why wouldn't South Korea? Japan's strongest card when recruiting allies has always been its status as Asia's largest liberal democracy, at least on the values level. But the values alone aren't enough. In Abe's view, to really get a solid coalition, especially to get the US fully involved, Japan had to show real capability. The Americans aren't fools. If Japan only talks and doesn't act, the US won't jump in. By Abe's time, though, Japan was starting to show some real muscle, especially on the military side. What's Japan's most important military task? Maintaining the first island chain. That chain includes both Taiwan and Japan. That's why Abe famously said, A Taiwan contingency is a Japan contingency. People hear that phrase a lot these days, and sometimes think Sanae Takahashi came up with it. But no, it was Abe who first said it. For Taiwan, I've always believed Japan's resolve to defend it may actually be stronger than America's. But making a Taiwan contingency is a Japan contingency real was very difficult for governments before Abe, mainly because of Japan's constitution. Japan is, after all, a country that respects the rule of law. It's not like China, where Xi Jinping can do whatever he dreams up. No matter how powerful a Japanese prime minister is, he can't just ignore the law. Like Germany, Japan was a defeated power in World War II, and both countries had their military powers heavily restricted afterward. Japan's constitution clearly states that Japan forever renounces war as a means of settling international disputes, along with the threat or use of force. It also says Japan will not maintain armed forces with war potential, and it has no rights of belligerency. That's why we still call Japan's military the self-defense forces, not a national defense army. Under those rules, even if the CCP invaded Taiwan, Japan might want to help with force but had no legal basis. It could only shout slogans. At that point, Japan was a low-value ally for the US and the democratic camp. Japan itself had no real way to strongly confront China. So during Abe's time, he set out to change that situation. But because his party didn't have the super-majority needed to amend the constitution, Abe could only make small fixes through ordinary laws. Before Abe, Japan could exercise self-defense rights only under three conditions. First, there had to be an armed attack that was urgent and unjust against Japan itself. In other words, someone had to attack Japanese territory. Second, there had to be no other appropriate way to repel the attack. Third, any armed response had to be kept to the minimum necessary. Abe changed the first condition. Instead of only Japanese homeland being attacked, it became, if a country with close ties to Japan is attacked, and that attack threatens Japan's own survival, then Japan can exercise self-defense rights. That change gave legal grounding for Japan to defend Taiwan, though it's still deliberately vague since Taiwan's status as a country isn't clear in Japanese law. That ambiguity was part of Abe's clever way of gradually pulling the United States in. Later, Abe also revised parts of the US-Japan security treaty. Before, the treaty only obligated the US to defend Japan. There was no reciprocal duty for Japan to help the US legally. If US forces got hammered, Japan couldn't send troops. Abe changed that by adding US aircraft carriers and submarines to the category of closely related countries. An attack on them, even outside their home territory, counts. With those changes, Abe created the legal foundation for supporting Taiwan and holding the first island chain. In his vision, if China attacked Taiwan and the US stayed out, Japan still had some fuzzy legal room. Nothing forced Japan to use force. But if the US did get involved and its ships came under attack, then Japan could go all in, fully, legally, and without restriction. So, if Abe already did most of the heavy lifting, why is Sanae Takahashi now bringing these issues up again and pushing for more legal changes? It's mainly to deal with the new reality. When Abe took office in 2012, China was already strong, but its military power compared to today was on a completely different level. Back then, the main job was fixing the legal support for defending Taiwan. Today is different. China already has 3 aircraft carriers in the water. Against a military that powerful, Japan's self-defense forces look completely outmatched. Even if Japan could help Taiwan militarily, the impact would be limited. So to show more value and better counter the potential CCP threat, Sanae Takahashi is calling for lifting restrictions on the military, raising defense spending from 1% of GDP to 2%, breaking through the three non-nuclear principles to allow nuclear-powered submarines and boost combat capability. And her boldest idea? Amending the constitution to turn the self-defense forces into a proper national defense force, giving Japan full rights to declare war and engage in belligerency, normalizing the military. From all this, you can see that Sanae Takahashi's overall foreign policy thinking, especially toward the CCP, is identical to Shinzo Abe's. They just made different choices to realize those ideas under different circumstances and at different times. So in that light, it makes sense that the CCP attacks her. Japan's military buildup clearly threats the CCP as a hypothetical enemy, but the way the CCP attacks is wrong. Calling these policies a revival of Japanese militarism doesn't hold up at all. What is militarism? It's a system where the military dominates the civilian government, where the army stands above elected leaders. In today's world of civilian-led governments, there are hardly any real militarist states left. Even if China someday takes Taiwan by force, that wouldn't make it militarist. If China were truly militarist, it would be Zhang Youxia taking down Xi Jinping, not the other way around. Russia, which has already invaded Ukraine, doesn't fit the militarist label either. Putin is a civilian president, not a military dictator. If Prigogine and Wagner Group had actually overthrown him back then, maybe Russia would have looked half-militarist for a while. Now it doesn't. And Japan, even if it amends the constitution and lifts military restrictions, is still miles away from militarism. The military can never dominate the civilian system there, and today's Japan is even less likely to invade anyone proactively. Sanae Takahashi's rise and her policies aren't a revival of Japanese militarism. They are a revival of alertness and hostility toward the CCP expressed through military expansion and alliance building. Of course, Sanae Takahashi has already been in office since last October. So why talk about her now? It comes back to this election. After this vote, Japan is about to shift into the farce land of confrontation with the CCP. But before we get there, a quick note on Japan's political system. Japan is technically a constitutional monarchy, unlike the U.S. presidential system. It's more like Britain's, but not exactly. In Britain, power is split four ways, House of Lords, House of Commons, Prime Minister, and the King. The Commons directly elected, and the Prime Minister comes from the Commons majority, so that's where real power sits. The King has a theoretical veto power and the Lords can delay legislation, though those powers are almost never used in modern times. Japan is different because of World War II. The emperor was seen as supporting militarism, so post-war reforms targeted him. To avoid upsetting the Japanese public too much, the emperor wasn't completely eliminated, but his political power was stripped clean. Unlike the British monarch, the Japanese emperor has basically no political authority at all. That left Japan's constitutional monarchy incomplete. So Japan created a powerful elected upper house, the House of Consulars, to take over some of those checking functions. The consulars supervise the lower house and exercise powers similar to Britain's king and lords. Because Japan's upper house is elected, it has real teeth. It can reject bills from the lower houses. Ordinary laws need both houses to pass. Like in the U.S., if the upper house blocks, the lower house can try again and override with a two-thirds vote. For constitutional amendments, both houses need two-thirds, plus a national referendum. Understanding this logic is key to grasping what this election really means. Before now, no matter how strong Sanae Takaichi's views were as a prime minister, she couldn't really overturn anything. Her seats weren't enough. Before this election, her Liberal Democratic Party held only 191 of the 465 seats in the lower house, less than half. Even with the coalition partner Japan Innovation Party, they reached 229, still short of a majority. In the 248-seat House of Consulars, the LDP plus Innovation held just 120, again, no majority. Back then, Sanae Takaichi was a very constrained, weak prime minister under Japan's system. Most of her ideas couldn't become reality. At best, she could talk about them, like saying a Taiwan contingency is a Japan contingency. Not much need to pay a super-close attention to her views at that point. This time, it's completely different. She didn't just win, she won overwhelmingly. In this election, the LDP alone took 316 seats in the lower house, added a coalition partner, and the bloc reached 352. What does 316 seats mean? Historically, it's the best result any ruling party has achieved since the war ended and the new constitution came into force. The last time anything close happened was 2009, when the Democratic Party of Japan won 308. Even her mentor Shinzo Abe, after 8 years in power, peaked at 296 seats. More importantly, over 310 seats means more than two-thirds of the lower house. That lets the ruling party pass almost any ordinary law without the upper house, bypassing the consulates entirely. No Japanese party has ever had that kind of power before. Abe relied on coalition with Komeito, a party that leans towards making money quietly rather than hard confrontation with China. So, Abe's diplomacy was constantly checked. Now, Sanae Takahashi faces basically no such limits. She can raise defense spending, bring in nuclear-powered submarines, anything short of constitutional amendments, pretty much whenever she wants. It's no exaggeration to say she is not only Japan's first female prime minister, but probably the most powerful prime minister Japan has had since the war. Abe's strategy of aligning with the US to counter China will be carried out far more thoroughly under her, and the tensions between China and Japan are going to get much sharper in the coming period, probably more intense than anything we've seen in living memory. The Abe years were already the low point in China-Japan relations. The Senkaku flare-up happened on his watch. Most people first heard of a Yasukuni shrine because Abe visited in 2013, and that was still a constrained Abe. He still managed plenty of drama. Now imagine an unconstrained, even more determined Sanae Takahashi. The rhetorical battles between China and Japan are about to get very loud. For Taiwan, though, this is good news. Under her current line, Japan's commitment to defending Taiwan will become clearer and clearer. We may well see Japan make an explicit promise during her term. If the CCP invades Taiwan, Japan will defend it. Finally, a word on why Japan has shifted this way. Why the public so solidly backed Sanae Takahashi. I think it was inevitable. The future international landscape is a new Cold War, Cold War 2.0, between the US and China. Both sides will build their camps and confront each other. In the early stage of this standoff, as the CCP keeps exporting authoritarianism and as Trump demands countries pick a side firmly, we are seeing different reactions around the world. Japan has now gone all-in, chains wheeled tight to bind itself to the United States and confront the CCP. Meanwhile, Canada's Prime Minister Connie is visiting China, clearly hoping not to be locked onto the US ship and still play both sides. Why the difference? Geography. Japan is right next door to China. It feels the threat of the CCP rise in a direct, visceral way. Plus Japan has its own historical baggage from invading China, which adds a nationalist layer. Think about the last few years, little pink nationalists and angry youth going to Japan to vandalize Yasukuni Shrine, CCP wolf warrior diplomats threatening to cut off Sanae Takahashi's head. That stuff keeps happening. Across the Pacific, when has Canada ever felt anything like that? So Japan reacts most sharply, most directly, and fastest. Canada reacts more slowly and still dreams of having it both ways. It all makes sense, different locations, different sense of threat. Of course, the new US-China Cold War structure will take shape. Japan is just the first to realize it fully. Canada will eventually swing back toward the US too. Different paths, same destination, just a matter of timing. We are entering a new Cold War era. Sanae Takahashi's leading Japan firmly into the American camp may well be the opening act. Thank you so much for watching. If you find this video helpful, please like it, drop a comment below, and hit the subscribe button right here. 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