China ties, Taiwan top agenda as race for Japan’s new LDP leader, prime minister heats up

Campaigning for the ruling party’s leadership election on September 29 begins on Friday and Taiwan has emerged as a priority issue for the contenders

All of them seem to agree on the need to counter China, and analysts expect Tokyo’s warm Taipei ties to continue whichever candidate wins

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Outgoing Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga leaves from a news conference at his office in Tokyo after announcing the extension of the coronavirus state of emergency in Tokyo and 18 other areas. Photo: AP

Published: 8:15am, 13 Sep 2021Updated: 9:35pm, 13 Sep 2021

As the race to replace outgoing Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga as leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party heats up, Japan’s relations with Beijing – and the issue of Taiwan in particular – has emerged as a top priority for leadership contenders amid the continuing rivalry between China and the US.

Taro Kono, Japan’s popular Covid-19 vaccination minister, announced on Friday his candidacy for the LDP leadership, which opened up after Suga said last week that he would be stepping down.

Fumio Kishida, a former foreign minister, and Sanae Takaichi, a former internal affairs minister, had already declared they were in the running.

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Other names put forward by the media have included Seiko Noda, another ex-internal affairs minister, and former defence minister Shigeru Ishiba, though the latter – who often ranks high in popularity polls – has reportedly decided against running to throw his support behind Kono instead.

Kazuto Suzuki, a professor of international political economy at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Public Policy, said that while there had been a division between pro-Beijing and pro-Taipei camps within the LDP in the past, today’s leadership contenders all agreed on the need to counter Chinese aggression.

“There may be a different tone. Takaichi will be the toughest and Kishida may be the softest against China, but there won’t be a big change in the overall policy,” Suzuki said.

Madoka Fukuda, a global politics professor at Hosei University in Tokyo, said the possibility of an attack by the Chinese military on the Taiwan-controlled Kinmen or Quemoy, and the Matsu islands, which lie off the mainland’s southeastern Fujian province, or the seizure of the Dongsha, or Pratas, islands to the southwest of Taiwan, had been discussed at least among academics in Japan as part of a possible Taiwan contingency plan.

China ties, Taiwan top agenda as race for Japan’s new LDP leader, prime minister heats up

Campaigning for the ruling party’s leadership election on September 29 begins on Friday and Taiwan has emerged as a priority issue for the contenders All of them seem to agree on the need to counter China, and analysts expect Tokyo’s warm Taipei ties to continue whichever candidate wins

Campaigning for the ruling party’s leadership election on September 29 begins on Friday and Taiwan has emerged as a priority issue for the contenders

All of them seem to agree on the need to counter China, and analysts expect Tokyo’s warm Taipei ties to continue whichever candidate wins