Why is Shinzo Abe stirring the Japan-China pot with remarks about 'suicidal' attack on Taiwan?

Two pointed comments over Japan's close ties to Taiwan in the space of a couple of weeks by Shinzo Abe serve as warnings to both China's Communist Party and Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, where the former prime minister remains an influential voice behind the scenes, analysts say.

On Tuesday, Abe said in an online address to a security forum that Beijing must avoid antagonising other nations and stop demanding more territory from its neighbours.

"An adventure in military affairs, if pursued by such a huge economy as China's, could be suicidal," said Abe, who stepped down in October of last year but has chosen not to settle into the role of a backbencher.

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

"We must urge it not to pursue territorial expansion and restrain from provoking, often bullying, its neighbours because it could harm its own interests," he added.

Abe's comments came after an appearance at an event organised by a Taiwanese think tank on December 1 in which he emphasised that any military contingency involving Taiwan would also constitute an emergency for Japan and permit Tokyo to exercise the right to collective self-defence under the constitution.

Those comments attracted swift criticism from Beijing, which considers Taiwan to be a renegade province that must eventually be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary.

No longer constrained by the need to be wholly diplomatic in his pronouncements, Abe is now able to say what he was probably thinking while still in power, analysts say.

But his words are also a warning to Fumio Kishida, the new and relatively centrist prime minister, and Yoshimasa Hayashi, the like-minded foreign minister that he appointed in November.

"My immediate reaction to these comments is that Abe now feels free to say exactly what he was thinking when he was prime minister, but could not because it would have been far too controversial," said Akitoshi Miyashita, a professor of international relations at Tokyo International University.

"What he says is correct, however, because a contingency involving Taiwan would inevitably have a serious impact on Japan and there are thousands of US troops at bases here who would of course be involved," he said. "In that sense, he is correct in saying that Taiwan's security is inseparable from that of Japan."

Kishida might very well have reached the same conclusion, he added, but was unable to give voice to that position for the very same reason that Abe never felt able to when he was prime minister - concern at provoking a backlash from Beijing.

"Kishida wants to have a smooth relationship with China, although he finds himself in a very awkward situation at the moment because of the diplomatic boycott by the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and others of the Beijing Winter Olympics," Miyashita said.

Jeff Kingston, director of Asian studies at the Tokyo campus of Temple University, said Kishida might be "having trouble emerging from Abe's shadow" and that the former prime minister was still doing all that he could to influence the government's policies towards China.

"He's trying to box Kishida and Hayashi in, which is what the right-wing of the party wants because they are concerned that the foreign minister is too pro-China and that Kishida favours engagement and diplomacy with Beijing," he said. Those concerns have been heightened by the suggestion that Hayashi may respond positively to an invitation to travel to Beijing for talks with his Chinese counterpart.

"To me, these comments are Abe drawing a red line for both [Chinese President] Xi Jinping and Kishida," Kingston said.

He pointed out, however, that Abe appeared to be "pragmatic" when he first came to power in 2006, making his first overseas visit as prime minister to China in an effort to rebuild a bilateral relationship that had taken a battering under his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi.

Abe was still firmly conservative in his political leanings but he was at the time open to the idea of applying diplomacy to the relationship, Kingston said. In the intervening years, however, Beijing had opted for a more confrontational approach to other nations, which had forced Tokyo to respond in kind, he said.

China had kept up maritime patrols around the Senkaku islands, which Beijing claims as its territory and refers to as the Diaoyu Islands, and was stepping up military cooperation and joint exercises with Russia, he said. Tokyo was also deeply concerned about China's occupation and militarisation of disputed islands in the South China Sea.

"As China has escalated militarily, the security situation has become riskier for Japan and Abe had to respond to the changes in that security environment and China's belligerence," Kingston said.

The escalations do not bode well for plans to mark the 50th anniversary of the normalisation of diplomatic relations between Beijing and Tokyo in September 2022, the analysts said.

They were also likely to be seized upon by conservatives in Japan who are calling for increased defence spending to ensure the nation's security.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Copyright (c) 2021. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.