Japan-Taiwan: China’s Mobilization of the "Antifascist" Narrative

Under Xi Jinping, China has been constructing a coherent strategy aimed at creating the conditions for targeted actions against the so-called "Taiwanese separatist and independence forces." To this end, Beijing is waging a battle of narratives to convince both domestic and international audiences of the legitimacy, and even the legality of resorting to violence, whether military in nature or akin to law enforcement operations. 

Military pressure plays a central role in this strategy and is inseparable from a broader cognitive offensive that is already unfolding and likely to intensify in the coming years. It is increasingly salient that China is mobilizing the language of antifascism and embedding the Taiwan question within a historical narrative that since late 2025, seeks to revive the specter of Japanese militarism. Yet, it does not simply mean that China is preparing the ground for a blockade or a war. More immediately, China is seeking to make limited interventions against specific actors acceptable to the international community, under the guise of defending the post-World War II international order.

The Quest for Legitimacy in the Use of Force

The Chinese military exercises "Justice Mission 2025," conducted on 29 and 30 December 2025, once again made the risk of war in the Taiwan Strait undoubtedly clear. Overall, China is becoming increasingly explicit in its threat of blockading Taiwan’s principal ports. For the first time, it employed long-range artillery (280 km) with live ammunition, striking exercise zones near Taiwan’s territorial waters and even overlapping the contiguous zone. Given the scale of China’s industrial capacity, the choice of long-range artillery represents a cost-effective and nearly unlimited alternative to the use of ballistic or cruise missiles.

The exercises were also timed to disrupt air traffic during a peak tourist period. For the first time, many individuals experienced direct inconvenience from cross-strait relations. Moreover, "Justice Mission 2025" was accompanied in the Chinese press by reports of an unprecedented threat to intercept a shipment of HIMARS systems to Taiwan, transported by the shipping company Evergreen. These systems, well known from the Russia-Ukraine war and already in service with Taiwan’s armed forces, have just been authorized for an additional sale to Taiwan by the Trump administration. While it appears unlikely that China would take the risk of seizing American weapons in transit to Taiwan, the communication strategy is nonetheless explicit: Beijing is gradually seeking to accustom the international community to the idea that various forms of use of force against Taiwan are legitimate, and even lawful.

Beyond the purely military significance of these military exercises, it is essential to grasp their dimension as a large-scale influence operation. China systematically repeats that military actions would precisely target "Taiwanese separatist and independence forces," as well as any external actions encouraging them, accusing President Lai of turning Taiwan into a "powder keg."

While this rhetoric is not new, it is now deployed in a context that is unprecedented in three respects. First, Taiwan’s executive branch, weakened and lacking a parliamentary majority, is struggling to implement its ambitious plan to modernize the island’s armed forces. Second, the Trump administration has adopted a more explicitly realist approach to the use of American power. In doing so, he makes clear that national security interests prevail over international law considerations while downgrading the defense of democracies, a principle long central to U.S. support for Taiwan, to the status of strategic footnote. Third, the Japanese government, led by the new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, a figure from the most nationalist wing of the Liberal Democratic Party, has explicitly affirmed Japan’s strategic interest in the Taiwan Strait’s stability, which is constantly tested and threatened by China’s attempts to transform the status quo.

It is therefore very likely that this theme will gain prominence over the next two years. In late November 2025, Xi Jinping had a call with President Trump to convince him that Taiwan’s return to China is "an integral part of the post-war international order," given that, at the time, the United States and China "fought together against fascism and militarism." He thus invited the United States to "jointly safeguard the victory of World War II" alongside China.

A Blockade of Taiwan as a "Survival-Threatening Situation" for Japan

Xi’s remarks sought to capitalize on the recent Sino-Japanese tensions surrounding Taiwan in order to give greater substance to this emerging Chinese narrative. On November 7th, Katsuya Okada, a leading figure of Japan’s main opposition party called the Constitutional Democratic Party, posed a parliamentary question regarding how the Japanese government would respond to a scenario involving a blockade of Taiwan. In response, Prime Minister Takaichi stated that "if warships were used to place Taiwan under the control of the Beijing government, including through the use of armed force, this could clearly constitute a survival-threatening situation."

The expression "survival-threatening situation" (存立危機事態) has a specific meaning in Japanese law. It refers to a strict legal threshold, and once crossed, the Japanese government may deploy its Self-Defense Forces even in the absence of a direct attack on Japanese territory. This notion had never before been used by a sitting Japanese prime minister in the context of Taiwan. Yet the idea that an armed conflict in the Taiwan Strait could be viewed in these terms by Tokyo was already well established. In 2021, after leaving office, Shinzo Abe explained at a conference in Taipei that "a Taiwan contingency is a Japan contingency, and therefore a contingency for the Japan-U.S. alliance" (台湾有事は日本有事であり、それは日米同盟の有事でもある).

Under Shinzo Abe’s leadership as prime minister from 2012 to 2020, Japan gradually expressed more explicit support for the American deterrence posture in the Taiwan Strait. In 2014, the Cabinet reinterpreted Article 9 of the Constitution, and in 2015, clarified the conditions for the use of force by detailing the provisions of the "Act on the Peace and Independence of Japan and Maintenance of the Security of the Nation and the People in Armed Attack Situations, etc., and Survival-Threatening Situations" (enacted in 2003, amended in 2015). Article 2 defines a "survival-threatening situation" as one in which "an armed attack against a foreign country that has a close relationship with Japan occurs, and as a result, threatens Japan’s survival and poses a clear danger of fundamentally overturning the people’s right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness." This provision provides a legal basis for Japan’s exercise of the right of collective self-defense: an attack against U.S. forces in Asia could thus fall under this category.

At first glance, Prime Minister Takaichi appears to have chosen to broaden the interpretation of a "survival-threatening situation" beyond a scenario involving direct strikes against the American ally. Could a Chinese naval offensive against Taiwan, even without direct Sino-American confrontation, fall into this category? Would Taiwan be considered a "foreign country that has a close relationship with Japan"? In her remarks, Prime Minister Takaichi remained vague on both points, focusing instead on the blockade scenario itself and the severe risks it would pose to Japan’s national security. Viewed through this lens of direct risks to Japan, the emphasis on a blockade in the "Justice Mission 2025" exercises could only reinforce an assessment-already relatively consensual in Japanese national security circles-that China is seriously considering this course of action, despite the obvious risks of escalation toward a regional war in Northeast Asia.

According to him, Japan’s strategic choices on this issue will weigh "decisively on the future of the international system." It is likely that this American dimension motivated Sanae Takaichi’s statement. But beyond its performative aspect, the analysis of Japanese security interests, the candor regarding the dominant legal interpretation of constraints and room for maneuver, the concern raised by the specific scenario of a blockade, and the strategic choice to mobilize Japanese resources to help deter China from resorting to the use of force against Taiwan-are all fully consistent with the orientations defined by Japan throughout the 2010s.

It is also important to underscore public support in Japan for these orientations. Polls conducted by the Kyodo news agency indicate that 48.8 percent of the Japanese population considers the activation of the right of collective self-defense to be justified in a Taiwan scenario, with very clear majorities among generations under the age of fifty.

The Stratagem of Extension

This Japanese clarification offered China an opportunity to articulate an antifascist narrative that is gradually taking on increasing importance in service of its Taiwan policy. In The Art of Always Being Right, Schopenhauer defined the "stratagem of extension" as one that takes "the opponent’s thesis, extends it beyond its natural limits, gives it the most general and expansive meaning possible, and then exaggerates it." China’s offensive reaction to the Japanese prime minister’s remarks on Taiwan represents an almost textbook application of this rhetorical device, unfolding in three stages.

First, Chinese diplomacy characterized the Japanese prime minister’s statements as "interference in China’s internal affairs" and as a dangerous "signal sent to pro-independence Taiwanese separatist forces." In doing so, it deliberately ignored the very serious regional and international consequences of a Taiwan blockade scenario, as well as Japan’s highly restrictive legal framework in matters of national security.

Secondly, Beijing went beyond these now-familiar formulations. A letter sent by Chinese Ambassador Fu Cong to the United Nations Secretary-General represented a further escalation in rhetorical distortion. Ambassador Fu portrayed Takaichi’s remarks as the first expression of Japan’s "ambitions to intervene militarily in the Taiwan question." He equated any attempt at "an armed intervention in the cross-Strait situation" with an act of aggression, to which China would respond by "resolutely exercising its right of self-defence," guaranteed by the UN Charter.

A Coherent Through-Line Toward More Targeted Actions

In analyzing China’s policy toward Taiwan, it is essential to distinguish between immediate reactions and longer-term orientations. The rhetorical offensive targeting Prime Minister Takaichi, like Beijing’s attempt to justify the "Justice Mission 2025" exercises as a response to Taiwan’s ongoing acquisitions of American weapons, belongs to the former category. Beijing consistently responds to every international development that could expand Taiwan’s room for maneuver. Failing to respond would be an admission of weakness-particularly at a time when observers are closely scrutinizing the ongoing purges within the leadership of the People’s Liberation Army.

China’s Taiwan policy is nonetheless embedded in a less immediate timeline, structured around three major milestones between 2026 and 2028.

• The state visit of Donald Trump to Beijing, currently planned for April 2026, is still perceived as an opportunity to secure statements from the American president favorable to Chinese interests, even though the Trump administration has thus far been firm, coherent, and predictable in its support for Taipei.
• Taiwan’s municipal and local elections, scheduled for November 2026, will constitute a large-scale test of Chinese influence operations. A clear victory by the opposition over President Lai and the Democratic Progressive Party would reinforce the Chinese leadership’s belief that its strategy of delegitimizing the Taiwanese executive is producing tangible results.
• Finally, a decisive sequence will open between the 21st Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in autumn 2027 and Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections in January 2028. All actions currently under way converge toward this political horizon, with a clear ambition: to provoke a change in leadership in Taipei.

The convergence of these timelines sheds light on the crucial importance of the cognitive operations domain in China’s strategy toward Taiwan. In this endeavor, China relies on three main forces.

First, Taiwan’s political opposition has embarked on a strategy of radical criticism of the executive, described as an authoritarian power exhibiting tendencies of "green communism" (green being the color associated with Taiwanese independence) and "independence fascism." Some opponents of the Taiwanese government have even displayed Nazi flags in Taipei’s business district to denounce what they frame as an authoritarian drift. While conceptually confused, such imagery nonetheless creates fertile ground for an international influence operation orchestrated by China.

Second, Russia’s justification of its "special operation" in Ukraine through the fight against neo-Nazism-although it failed to convince European countries directly scarred by Nazism-appears to be viewed in Beijing as a strategic narrative worthy of consideration. Any Chinese attempt to mobilize similar rhetorical devices would likely meet the same fate. But Chinese and Russian propaganda efforts aim less at convincing than at sowing confusion, creating divisions, and paralyzing any coordinated response. European public opinion is not their sole target: for Beijing, delegitimizing the Taiwanese executive is of major importance across all its external relations, particularly with countries most exposed to the Taiwan Strait-the United States and Japan, but also Southeast Asian nations with large communities working in Taiwan, such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

Chinese military exercises must therefore be viewed through a broader lens. In recent years, Chinese law has evolved to provide for severe penalties against "die-hard independence separatists" (台独顽固分子), including the death penalty. A list of Democratic Progressive Party officials has even been made public. The Chongqing Public Security Bureau has officially announced the opening of a criminal investigation against legislator Puma Shen, accused of "crimes of secession" under Chinese criminal law and the new 2024 directives targeting "die-hard independence separatists." The targeting of specific individuals for political crimes under Chinese law is clearly the new frontline in cross-strait relations. It is likely to acquire growing strategic importance as China refines its use of extraterritorial legislation and law-enforcement instruments as tools of political warfare.

Conclusion

Ultimately, China’s strategy toward Taiwan combines military pressure, antifascist rhetoric, and legal instruments to prepare targeted actions that Beijing deems legitimate, while remaining below the threshold of open confrontation. By mobilizing history, law, and strategic communication, China seeks to reshape international perceptions of the status quo in the Taiwan Strait and to create a normative framework designed to systematically weaken the legitimacy of the Taiwanese government by blurring all political and legal reference points. The time horizon of this approach is set by Taiwan’s democratic electoral calendar, and Beijing is unlikely to reconsider its strategy unless there is an electoral demonstration that the use of antifascism and targeted extraterritorial actions is counterproductive.

Copyright image : ADEK BERRY / AFP
A Chinese ship heading for Pingtan Island, 30 December 2025.