Bhopinder Singh | Quad’s Relevance In Question As New Japan PM Takes On China Over Taiwan

The continuing relevance of the four-member Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, across the Indo-Pacific region, which comprises the United States, India, Japan and Australia, has come into question, particularly after Japan’s new hardline Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi (incidentally, the first woman in the job in a largely conservative society), pulled no punches in rattling the People’s Republic of China over the Taiwan question.

For all the Quad members since its inception, the undeclared elephant in the room was China. But over the past few months, Beijing has been getting thawing signals from the other three members. US President Donald Trump held his much-hyped “G2” summit with President Xi Jinping at a military base near South Korea’s Busan on October 30; Prime Minister Narendra Modi hobnobbed warmly with Mr Xi on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, while Australian PM Anthony Albanese made a week-long trip to China to lower the heat. Mr Trump eased his steep tariffs targeting China and gushed that Mr Xi was the “great leader of a great country” to smoothen his path.

In the midst of all this, the arrival of hardline nationalist and well-known China hawk Sanae Takaichi as Japan’s new Prime Minister threw a spanner in the works, leaving the Chinese in knots. A one-time protégé of firebrand Shinzo Abe (the Quad’s original architect), Ms Takaichi is an unapologetic conservative, revisionist and, in China’s eyes, an agent provocateur! Though she is largely old-school in internal affairs, with the defence of traditional/paternalistic Japanese values, trying to retain a 19th century law barring couples from using separate surnames, or even insisting on only male heirs to Japan’s monarchy; worries over China’s intentions define her aggressive foreign policy, where her language and suggestions hark back to the Shinzo Abe era.

While the Chinese were always wary of her supposed attempts to whitewash Japan’s history of aggression (such as denying the Chinese version of the Nanjing massacre) and glorification of Japan’s militaristic heroes with her repeated visits to the Yasukuni Shrine; nothing braced the Chinese to the extent of her aggressive position as her recent conflation of the defence of Taiwan to the defence of Japan itself! Not since 2010, when a tense row broke out over the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands (simultaneously claimed by China), has the situation deteriorated to such levels as now.

Ms Takaichi has recently shelved all pretence of the so-called “strategic ambiguity” on Taiwan by noting that “worst case” scenarios involving “battleships and the use of force”, then that could “constitute a situation threatening the survival [of Japan], any way you slice it”. Her supposition was that such a situation was “survival-threatening for Japan”, which would allow for the mobilisation and due empowerment of Japanese Self-Defence Forces, as a collective and legitimate response. In effect, she has openly questioned the validity of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution (written by US occupation forces in the aftermath of the Second World War) which effectively renounces war and restrains Japan’s “war potential”. This unprecedented questioning of Japan’s self-imposed constraints has led Tokyo to shelve the traditional ceiling of one per cent of GDP on defence, to doubling the same to two per cent of GDP by next year itself. Even Japan considering the possible induction of nuclear-powered submarines runs contrary to its decades-old non-nuclear position on weaponry. China reads this potential Japanese militaristic build-up as directly aimed at China itself, and the brazen statement of Ms Takaichi has set the cat among the Chinese pigeons. Further, she has also refused to retract her statement.

It is no surprise that the Chinese are alarmed, and have reacted coercively, as they always do, by issuing travel advisories to their citizens from traveling to Japan (Chinese constitute a quarter of foreign tourists to Japan), refund already booked air tickets, reintroduced ban on Japanese seafood, etc. If the spat doesn’t abate, there is the possibility of the Chinese public boycotting Japanese goods (as in 2012), and if push comes to shove, even disrupting supplies of rare earth metals could be on the anvil. For both the Chinese and Ms Takaichi, backing down easily is not an option.

Global Times, China’s unofficial mouthpiece, noted the reaction of its foreign minister: “Wang (Yi) said it is shocking for a sitting Japanese leader to openly send a wrong signal of attempting to intervene militarily in the Taiwan question -- saying what should not be said and crossing a red line that must not be touched.” Despite the thin-skinned Chinese reaction, the so-called “red line” was breached by Ms Takaichi and the “One China” position has been challenged yet again by a regional power.

Ironically, Japan doesn’t officially recognise Taiwan as a nation, and has a wounded history of having occupied Taiwan along with the Chinese mainland earlier. But all that was in the distant past, as now both the Taiwanese and Japanese citizens are making common cause against mainland China. The mood in Japan is decidedly anti-China and this may let Ms Takaichi retain her current belligerence and grandstanding.

These developments may shift Beijing’s focus from the choppy and restive South China Seas, where its expansionism runs foul of the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia, towards the North China Sea separating it from Japan. There are already murmurs of Chinese coastguard ships patrolling dangerously close to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands to signal its counter-intent. It will test the patience and wits of both nations to stop this impasse from escalating further. However, this has also reignited the Quad’s relevance, including the silence of many members, in calling out the unilateralism of the Chinese in the Indo-Pacific region. For now, Ms Sanae Takaichi has fired the first salvo, and it has effectively reignited the Quad debate.

The writer is a retired lieutenant-general and a former lieutenant-governor of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Puducherry