by WorldTribune Staff, July 2, 2026 Non-AI Real World News
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chairman Xi Jinping’s grand strategy to control the First Island Chain thus displacing the U.S. as the dominant Pacific power has been publicly challenged by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
Takaichi declared that a Chinese attack on Taiwan would constitute an “existential crisis” for Japan, marking a historic shift to a hawkish, proactive security policy from its unrelenting pacifist stance based on its “MacArthur Constitution” since World War II.
Xi Jinping ‘is now acting so goofy because he is genuinely shocked that a Japanese woman (Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi) is doing that to him.’
In late 2025, Takaichi stated in the Japanese Diet that a Taiwan contingency could allow Japan to take military action in collective self-defense.
Xi’s regime in Beijing were outraged at what they termed Japan’s “remilitarization.”
Communist China’s furious response, which included rolling out economic sanctions and export controls against Japan, largely backfired, analysts say, when Takaichi’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) won a historic mandate in snap parliamentary elections.
China has also escalated its military and coast guard presence in the East China Sea and deployed dozens of vessels in maritime “gray zone” activities. Economically, Beijing has retaliated by heavily restricting crucial mineral shipments and maintaining a ban on Japanese seafood imports.
Takaichi has not backed down. She continues to push practical security and material alliances across the Indo-Pacific.
In a post to LinkedIn, conservative commentator Edo Natio noted: “Xi Jinping has already lost ‘his’ war — not just with Japan, but with the entire First Island Chain, which is starting to align in sync under a quiet but sturdy Japanese leadership to deter CCP aggression.
“This is the very last thing Xi ever envisioned in 2012 when he believed that China had already achieved its strategic objective of completely pushing the U.S. out of the first and second island chains and establishing complete Chinese hegemony — the first step in his actual ‘China Dream’ on the road to global domination. He is now acting so goofy because he is genuinely shocked that a Japanese woman is doing that to him.
“Backed by substantial support in economic security and military security programs, Takaichi is well on the way to persuading the other member states of the FIC to come together in a First Island Chain Deterrence Association, not NATO, no Art. 5 — but a group of the willing to respond collectively when CCP China launches provocations against any member. This may sound weak to some, but CCP plans for decades have been about keeping all of the states isolated and weak. CCP assumes they can deal with other states one-on-one. If 5 or 7 FIC states collectively respond to the next egregious provocation in the SCS, then all of CCP propaganda turns to smog.”
Journalist Matthew Fulco posted to LinkedIn:
The PRC is losing its spat with Japan by almost any measure.
The earliest stage of its pressure campaign, which featured ugly if empty threats, aimed to force Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to retract her statement about Taiwan.
When that didn’t happen, the PRC sought to use economic coercion to weaken her political standing. That too failed, as she won a historic supermajority in Japan’s February lower house election.
Now the PRC appears to simply want to inflict pain on Japan — though not so much that Tokyo retaliates. Hence the latest half-hearted export controls announced June 29. No more dual-use Chinese items for the Japanese National Institute for Defense Studies and research centers for ground, naval, and air systems.
The justification for this latest move is “the rising threat of Japanese neo-militarism.”
The maladroit messaging shows that for all the party-state’s techno-industrial prowess, it remains captive to suffocating Marxist-Leninist dogma that long ago lost any semblance of credibility.
The June 30th Global Times opined, “Its [Japan’s] concealed, systematic, and normalized path toward military expansion is not only more deceptive but also more destructive. Unlike the overt militarism of the past, Japan’s current military buildup is advancing through comprehensive and institutionalized means across multiple domains.”
It is hard for the world to take the PRC seriously when it accuses a country that has been peaceful since 1945 of “neo-militarism.”
But within the CCP system, this language provides a rationale and justification for escalating pressure on Japan — which is what Chinese leader Xi Jinping wants to do.
Since Xi came to power in 2012, the PRC has feuded with its rivals in the region continuously, though never all at once. This feud with Japan comes at the same time as one with the Philippines, but while relations with the U.S., South Korea, Australia and India are relatively stable.
To that end, the Global Times editorial contains a barely veiled threat: “In this context, it is particularly important to remind certain wavering countries that any country or bloc that undermines China’s sovereignty, security, or development interests should not expect China alone to bear the costs while remaining unscathed themselves. Japan is not an exception — it is a case in point.”
Meanwhile, on June 28, Japan and South Korea held the first talks between their defense chiefs in 11 years.
Related: In war of exercises to dominate East Asia, attack on Iran advanced U.S. credibility, June 30, 2026
