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China-Japan military tensions: what lies ahead in 2026?
Analysts hold out little hope that security pressures will ease, given US insistence that regional allies boost first island chain defences
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As the new year unfolds, China finds itself grappling with strategic pressures fuelled by two US treaty allies at its doorstep – Japan and South Korea. In the first of a two-part series, Seong Hyeon Choi looks at how historically fraught China-Japan ties might fare as Tokyo bolsters its military posture with record budgets and advanced weaponry. Read the second part here.
China and Japan have never fully resolved the decades-old grudges of their wartime history and territorial disputes, but it was near the end of 2025 – the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Asia – that military tensions seemed to stir in ways rarely seen for years.
The Donald Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, released in December, included a pledge to deter conflict in the first island chain with the focus on the Taiwan Strait.
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The series of islands and archipelagos along the eastern edge of continental Asia, stretching from Japan through the Philippines, is part of a US containment strategy to restrict Chinese military access to the Pacific Ocean.
The security document stressed that the United States “must urge” allies such as Japan and South Korea to increase their share of the defence burden to “deter adversaries and protect the first island chain”.
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Also in December, a Pentagon report warned that the Chinese military build-up was leaving the US “vulnerable”, adding to the pressure on Washington’s Indo-Pacific allies to boost defence spending and driving the region towards a tense crossroads between China and its neighbours.
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