We will not just sit back if you invade Taiwan, Abe warns China

A Chinese nuclear submarine this week made a rare surface transit of the Taiwan Strait in an apparent show of strength.

Japan would treat a Chinese invasion of Taiwan as a crisis for its own security, the country’s former prime minister said in the latest indication that Tokyo would take part in any armed defence of the self-governed island.

Shinzo Abe, who stepped down last year but remains an influential powerbroker in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, was speaking on Wednesday after a Chinese nuclear submarine made a rare surface transit of the ­Taiwan Strait in an apparent show of strength.

Beijing on Thursday summoned the Japanese ambassador to China over Mr Abe’s “extremely erroneous remarks” on Taiwan, the foreign ministry said.

Mr Abe used an online speech to a Taiwanese think tank to send a warning to President Xi Jinping of China. “Any armed invasion of Taiwan would present a serious threat to Japan,” he told the Institute for National Policy Research.

“A Taiwan crisis would be a Japan crisis and therefore a crisis for the Japan-US alliance. People in Beijing, President Xi in particular, should never misunderstand this.”

Mr Abe is the latest senior Japanese politician to express concern about Chinese intentions in Taiwan and a determination to stand up to any attempt to “reunify” the island by force.

Taiwan is a prosperous democracy and has been self-governing since Chinese nationalist forces fled there after their defeat by the communists in 1949.

Foreign governments, including Japan, acknowledge in principle that Taiwan is a sovereign part of China – the “One China” policy. Western governments, however, insist that reunification must take place without force, which Beijing refuses to rule out. The prospect of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, against a defence by US forces, has long been regarded as the potential trigger for a superpower conflict.

In the past, powerful politicians in the LDP supported engagement with China. In recent years this faction has been eclipsed by hawkish conservatives, chief among them Mr Abe, who are more and more indignant about Beijing’s claim to the ­remote Senkaku Islands administered by Japan.

Japan’s fear is that forced Taiwan reunification would be accompanied by seizure of the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, which Beijing claims – and then, the Japanese islands of Okinawa, which so far it does not.

Mr Abe expressed support for Taiwan’s application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free-trade agreement of which Japan is the senior member and which China has ­applied to join. “A stronger Taiwan, a thriving Taiwan, and a Taiwan that guarantees freedom and human rights is also in Japan’s interests,” he said.

His speech drew an angry response from Beijing. Wang Wenbin, China’s foreign ministry spokesman, said Mr Abe had ­“flagrantly made wrong remarks on the Taiwan question”.

Satellite photographs show that on Monday a Chinese Type- 094 Jin Class nuclear-powered submarine passed through the Taiwan Strait on the surface. Antony Wong Tong, a Macau-based military observer, told the South China Morning Post. “A surfaced transit doesn’t make sense – unless the (People’s Liberation Army) wants people to see it.”

Meanwhile, human rights group Safeguard Defenders said at least 610 Taiwanese were extradited or deported by foreign governments to China instead of Taiwan between 2016 and 2019.

The Times