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Carol Yang

No longer confined to disputed islands or historical memory, the rivalry between Beijing and Tokyo has evolved into a fight for the global microphone, as both countries try to define each other’s international identity.
Amid an escalating diplomatic crisis, China is intensifying its rhetoric against what it calls Japan’s “new militarism”, using World War II-era history to rally regional and global sympathy for its position.
In stark contrast, Japan has rejected the label as “false claims”, casting itself as a defender of regional security, a peace-loving country and a victim of “coercion”.
Tokyo has argued that Beijing’s expanding arsenal, “opaque” military build-ups and “challenges to the established rules” should worry the international community.


While China’s denunciation of Japan’s new militarism is still being tested for traction abroad, many countries between the Asia-Pacific region and Europe have continued to deepen their defence cooperation with Tokyo.
“China faces a profoundly distorted global narrative that has largely obscured the fascist atrocities committed by Japan against China and other nations during World War II that have never been fully reckoned with at the international level,” said Shen Yi, executive director of the Centre for National Security Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai.
“The gap in collective memory has provided fertile ground for Japan’s new militarism to resurface.”
To address this, Shen said, Beijing should expand historical research and global communications through films, literature and academic outreach to present second world war realities.
Such efforts must adapt to today’s communications landscape, he added, suggesting the use of AI technologies to present historical facts through visual means.
Addressing the Shangri-La Dialogue in May, Japanese Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi dismissed China’s accusations of new militarism against Japan as “nothing further from the truth”.
Koizumi said “it is only natural” for every country to update their defence capabilities to deal with new challenges.
In the clash of narratives, “China is pointing out more than just the rise of new militarism in Japan; the core agenda-setting is about safeguarding the post-World War II international order”, Shen said.
This approach required upholding the legal framework established by the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation, he added, including the total elimination of Japanese militarism, the strict delimitation of the territorial scope of Japanese sovereignty and the preservation of Japan’s pacifist constitutional order.
According to Shen, Tokyo has spent decades diminishing global awareness of its wartime atrocities, seeking to sever its modern identity from its aggressor past to cultivate an image of a “new Japan”.
A Western-centric global World War II narrative that had long marginalised non-Western victims, particularly those in Asia, inadvertently facilitated this effort, he said.


For its part, Tokyo has sought to deflect discussions about its wartime past on public occasions.
A Japanese scholar said that responding to Beijing’s accusations by citing Japan’s post-war pacifism risked validating the historical parameters set by China.
“Getting dragged into an exhausting, asymmetrical debate over past grievances is a losing proposition,” wrote Masahiro Matsumura, a professor of international politics and national security at St Andrew’s University in Osaka, in a commentary in The Japan Times in July.
“Tokyo must devise a sophisticated strategy that neutralises this rhetoric,” said Matsumura, who also holds a research position at the Taiwan Centre for Security Studies and advocates for closer Japan-Taiwan security coordination.
“Japan must proactively engage and reassure its neighbours through transparent defence diplomacy, ensuring that Beijing cannot use the ghosts of the 20th century to drive a wedge between Japan, its Western allies and its vital East Asian neighbours.”
This year, Japan retained its standing as Southeast Asia’s most trusted major power, with 65.6 per cent of regional respondents expressing confidence in Tokyo, according to the Singapore-based ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s annual survey.
China’s score of 39.8 per cent was much lower than Japan’s, though trust in Beijing across Asean surpassed distrust for the first time since the survey started in 2019.
Southeast Asian countries naturally prioritised their immediate interests and therefore China should deepen cooperation with its neighbours, Shen said, making opposition to the resurgence of Japanese militarism a shared regional security agenda.
This would ensure that neighbouring countries fully understood the danger and stood ready to coordinate with China in safeguarding regional peace and stability, he added.
The public silence reflects the “Asean centrality” and the bloc’s commitment to avoiding taking sides in major-power disputes, according to Ge Hongliang, vice-dean of the Asean College at Guangxi Minzu University.
Ge said the position was rooted in the countries’ complex World War II experiences.


Countries like Myanmar were under Western colonial rule before Japan’s invasion, leading some early nationalist movements to view Japanese forces as tactical leverage to expel European colonial powers, he added.
Although the Japanese army later carried out widespread wartime abuses across Southeast Asia, post-war dynamics shifted rapidly.
As Washington redirected its Asia policy in service of Cold War containment, Tokyo launched the “Fukuda Doctrine” in 1977, pledging that Japan would never become a military power, Ge said.
The policy also committed to building “heart-to-heart” partnerships with Southeast Asian countries as equal economic partners, he added.
Decades of systematic economic diplomacy under this framework effectively neutralised anti-Japanese sentiment and rebuilt regional trust, Ge said.
However, he cautioned that Southeast Asia’s neutrality should not be mistaken for indifference towards Japan’s present security trajectory.
Tokyo’s dialogue on nuclear option adjustments directly conflicts with Asean’s long-standing push to strengthen the Southeast Asia nuclear weapon-free zone, a commitment signed in 1995 to keep the region free of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.
In July, Koizumi called for breaking Japan’s long-standing taboo on discussing nuclear weapons, which was widely seen as laying the groundwork to dismantle the country’s three non-nuclear principles.
The principles are Tokyo’s long-held commitment not to possess, produce or permit the introduction of nuclear weapons into Japanese territory.
“Southeast Asia’s silence is not unconditional,” Ge said. “If Japan’s new militarism crosses a line that directly destabilises the regional balance or threatens Southeast Asian security interests, Asean’s quiet neutrality will inevitably begin to fray.”


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In quest to win trust of Asian neighbours, Beijing is intensifying its rhetoric against Tokyo’s changing defence posture


In quest to win trust of Asian neighbours, Beijing is intensifying its rhetoric against Tokyo’s changing defence posture.


China vs Japan: the battle for the global microphone to reshape post-war identity

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}In quest to win trust of Asian neighbours, Beijing is intensifying its rhetoric against Tokyo’s changing defence posture

In quest to win trust of Asian neighbours, Beijing is intensifying its rhetoric against Tokyo’s changing defence posture