Washington — The Taiwan High Court on Thursday sentenced eight Taiwanese military officers to prison for spying for China in exchange for financial gain. Experts say the case shows a shift in China’s espionage tactics in Taiwan.

The sentences range from 18 months to 13 years in prison, making it one of Taiwan’s largest espionage cases in years.

The court said in a statement that the defendants were “willing to collect intelligence for China that caused the leak of important secrets” and that “they were seduced by money.”

An individual named Chen Yuxin was found to have contacted and recruited the defendants at key military sites to form a spy network for China. Chen was believed to have fled to China and remained there.

The defendants were also accused of planning to fly a CH-47 Chinook military helicopter to a Chinese aircraft carrier in the Taiwan Strait and of shooting a video indicating they would surrender to Beijing in the event of war, according to Taiwan’s official Central News Agency. Beijing used virtual currency to make payments to the defendants, according to Bloomberg.

Timothy Heath, a senior international defense researcher with the RAND Corporation, told VOA in an email, “The impact could have been severe if Taiwan’s authorities did not stop the espionage and defection of military assets like a helicopter in time.

“It is demoralizing to read of Taiwan soldiers voluntarily making videos that advertise their willingness to surrender to China,” he said.

Other cases of spying

The sentencing of the eight military officers is the latest in a growing number of espionage cases authorities say were carried out by China on the democratically ruled island.

Russell Hsiao, executive director of the Global Taiwan Institute and senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, said the sentences on Thursday reflect a shift in tactics by Chinese intelligence.

“This group of convicted agents involves relatively younger persons than in prior cases that have often targeted older retirees from the military,” he said in an email to VOA.

He said that while the older targets in previous cases were more driven by a mix of ideology reinforced by financial gains, “the motivation of these recent cases appears to be primarily financial.”

He also noted that while the sentences handed down by the court are arguably more severe than in prior cases, given the relatively limited value of the intelligence collected and passed on by these agents, this may be intended to send a deterrent signal to would-be spies.

China claims democratic Taiwan as its territory and has ramped up military and political pressure in the Taiwan Strait in recent years. The two sides have been spying on each other for decades.

Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said, “This is not a foreign policy issue, but a question concerning the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, which belong to the one and same China.”

Hsiao said there has been an upward trend in espionage cases involving Taiwan military personnel over the past decade.

Taiwan’s Control Yuan, the government’s oversight branch, confirmed this on Thursday. In a statement, it said that in recent years, there has been a significant increase in the number of espionage-related cases uncovered by Taiwan’s military security units, and the targets and forms of infiltration are different from those in the past.

The Control Yuan statement said that from 2011 to 2023, there were 40 espionage cases, three times the number from 2001 to 2010. Those cases involved a total of 113 military and civilian personnel, and many “top secrets” were leaked.

“This certainly shows that Beijing is intent on penetrating Taiwan’s military and security services, so Taipei will have to stay vigilant against these efforts in the years ahead,” Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told VOA in an email.

A Taiwanese sergeant who worked at a navy training center was indicted last month for allegedly photographing and leaking confidential defense information to Beijing.

In June, the court upheld the sentences given to two retired Taiwanese Air Force officers for helping or attempting to help China recruit intelligence assets in Taiwan.

“The cases show that Chinese-directed subversion and espionage remain major threats to Taiwan,” Heath said. “The biggest impact is the continued erosion of the public’s trust and even U.S. trust in Taiwan’s government and military to control the threat of Chinese subversion and espionage.”

In its statement, the Control Yuan urged Taiwan’s government to increase its defense budget to help prevent China’s espionage activities.

Taiwan’s Cabinet announced Thursday that defense spending for 2025 would increase by 7.7% to $20.25 billion.
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KATHMANDU, Nepal — At least 27 people were killed and 16 others injured when a bus carrying dozens of Indian pilgrims drove off a key highway and crashed on Friday in Nepal, officials said.

The bus veered off Prithvi Highway and rolled toward a fast-flowing river. Its roof was ripped open before stopping on the rocky bank just shy of the Marsyangdi’s rushing, murky water.

Rescue workers recovered 27 bodies from the wreckage and flew the 16 injured to the capital Kathmandu for treatment, according to Armed Police Force spokesperson Shailendra Thapa.

The wreckage was found near Abukhaireni, a town about 120 kilometers (75 miles) west of the capital, Kathmandu and the river. It would be removed only on Saturday as it was already dark and recovery was difficult, Thapa said.

There were 43 people on board the bus and all of them were Indian nationals, confirmed the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu. The embassy also said the bus fell about 150 meters (500 feet) from the highway, and they were coordinating with local authorities undertaking relief and rescue operations.

The bus from the neighboring Indian town of Gorakhpur was heading toward Kathmandu from the resort town of Pokhara on Friday when it drove off the highway midway through the journey.

Tens of thousands of Hindu pilgrims from neighboring India visit Nepal every year to visit Hindu shrines. Nepal is a Hindu-majority country. Local news reports said the pilgrims on the bus were also heading toward Kathmandu to visit the Pashupatinath, the revered temple of Hindu god Shiva.

In July, two buses were swept by landslides not too far from Friday’s accident site. Of the 65 people on board those two buses, only three survived and only about half the bodies were recovered. The wreckage of those buses has not been found yet but authorities have continued to search.

The Monsoon season that begins in June and stretches up to September brings heavy rainfall to Nepal triggering landslides and flooding. The heavy rainfall also swells the rivers and adds speed to the generally fast-flowing rivers due to the mountainous terrain. The season also turns rivers murky brown, making any search mission difficult.

Rescuers used divers, scanners and even heavy magnets to try to locate the wreckage but no traces were found.

Bus accidents in Nepal are mostly due to poorly maintained roads and vehicles and much of the country is covered by mountains with narrow roads.
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BEIJING — China and Belarus have agreed to strengthen cooperation in a range of sectors including trade, security, energy and finance, according to a joint statement, after Chinese Premier Li Qiang met Belarusian Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko in Minsk.

The statement released on Friday, a day after the Minsk meeting, said both countries would also strengthen cooperation in industrial supply chains and continue to enhance trade facilitation to reduce costs for both ends.

Belarus also intends to deepen cooperation with the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, a megalopolis which covers nine cities including Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Zhuhai, said the statement published by China’s foreign ministry.

According to the China Daily, Belarus was among the first group of countries that responded to China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Li said during his visit to Minsk that China-Belarus relations had remained vibrant for the past 32 years despite the changing international landscape.

China is the second-largest trading partner of Belarus and its largest trading partner in Asia, with bilateral trade exceeding $8.4 billion last year, said the China Daily.

Li arrived in Belarus on Thursday after wrapping up his first visit to Russia as Chinese premier. 
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washington / oakland, california — A trial got underway this week in Oakland, California, to decide the ownership of diaries written by Li Rui, a former secretary to communist China’s founder Mao Zedong, who became a vocal critic of the Chinese Communist Party. 

The trial will decide if Stanford University gets to keep the diaries donated by Li’s daughter or if they should go to Li’s widow, Zhang Yuzhen, his second wife, who is suing for the documents to be returned.  

The university’s legal team and U.S.-based China scholars suspect Zhang’s lawsuit is bankrolled by Chinese authorities who aim to control the sensitive historic narrative on Mao and the Communist party.  

“Li Rui is a living encyclopedia of the 80-year history of the Chinese Communist Party,” Cai Xia, a former professor at Beijing’s Central Party School who lives in the U.S., said in emailed replies to VOA Mandarin. “The Chinese Communist Party knows that the diaries contain history that cannot be exposed to the sunlight. Beijing will fight [to get] the diaries back at all costs.”  

10 million words

Li wrote about 10 million words in scores of diaries, letters and notes during his lifetime, including criticism of Mao, the party and the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.  

On June 4, 1989, when Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping ordered the military to clear pro-democracy protesters from Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds if not thousands, Li wrote, “I am restless all day long, and I always want to cry.” 

On January 9, 2010, he wrote, “Mao’s actions are totally contrary to the universal values of freedom, democracy, scientific progress, and the rule of law.”  

Li also criticized China’s current leader, President Xi Jinping.  

In 2018, when China began removing term limits for Xi, he quoted in his diary a foreign media report, “Democracy Is Dead.”  

In an interview with VOA Mandarin from his hospital bed that year, Li expressed disappointment with what he called Xi’s “low education.” 

Li’s daughter Li Nanyang, a U.S. citizen, says before he died in 2019, she gave about 40 boxes of his documents to Stanford’s Hoover Institution, citing his wishes that they be preserved there, and she became a visiting fellow.

Zhang, Li’s widow, claims Li Nanyang exercised “undue influence” over her father and has denied any plan to suppress information in the documents other than “personal” information. She has also said Stanford can make copies of the documents. But Hoover Institute scholars argue that copies would lack the authenticity of the originals.

Zhang sued Stanford and Li Nanyang in 2019 in Beijing’s Xicheng District Court, which awarded the ownership of the documents to Zhang and ordered the university to return them within 30 days. Li Nanyang did not attend that trial.  

Stanford that same year brought a “quiet title claim” against Zhang in the U.S., asking a federal court to step in and affirm its right to Li Rui’s archive.

Zhang hired an American lawyer and filed a counterclaim against Stanford and Li Nanyang in 2020, saying Li Nanyang “stole” personal information and “national treasures.” She accused Li Rui’s daughter and the university of “copyright infringement,” “public disclosure of private facts” and “intentional infliction of emotional distress.” 

Zhang’s lawyer in 2021 denied any involvement by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in supporting Zhang, despite lingering suspicions.

“I believed that from the beginning,” said Perry Link, a well-known sinologist and distinguished professor at the University of California, Riverside, to reporters outside the court Tuesday, a day before giving his testimony. “I am also prepared to present this argument in my testimony [that] the CCP is behind it.” 

Link added that the party’s role is “so clear now that I don’t think I’d have to make that argument. I mean [Zhang] herself said that she doesn’t have the money or the will” to pursue a lawsuit. 

Suspicions

On the second day of trial, Li Nanyang reiterated that her father had handed the diaries to Stanford University of his own free will. 

Li Nanyang expressed her own suspicions about the case, first in a group email to friends, but her comments were then picked up by several Chinese media in May. She said she believes the CCP and the Chinese government are interested only in “covering up the truth” in order to “ensure that the image of the Communist Party will always be ‘great, glorious, and correct,’ and that it will always be able to govern.”  

VOA Mandarin contacted the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco for a response but didn’t receive one by the time of publication. 

Kicked out of party

Born in 1917, Li Rui enthusiastically threw himself into the revolution that saw China’s Communist Party seize power in 1949. In the mid-1950s, he briefly served as Mao’s secretary before a falling out that led to his being kicked out of the party and sentenced to eight years in prison.  

When Li Rui was released in 1979, three years after Mao’s death, he was rehabilitated back into the party and promoted to executive deputy director of the Organization Department of the CCP Central Committee, responsible for selecting senior CCP officials.  

In his later years, he became an outspoken critic of the CCP, calling for political reform and democratic constitutionalism, and was recognized as a liberal figure within the CCP, despite his often sharp criticism. 

The Oakland trial will run through the end of the month. 

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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Taipei, Taiwan — Taiwan President Lai Ching-te will on Friday make his first visit since taking office in May to the sensitive Kinmen islands that sit next to the Chinese coast and have been the scene of stepped up tensions between Taipei and Beijing.

Taiwan has controlled Kinmen, and the Matsu islands further up the Chinese coast, since the defeated Republic of China government fled to Taipei in 1949 after losing a civil war with Mao Zedong’s communists. No peace treaty or armistice has ever been signed.

The scene of on-off fighting during the height of the Cold War, China’s coast guard has since February conducted regular patrols around Kinmen following the death of two Chinese people on a speedboat which Beijing blamed on Taipei.

Lai’s office said on Thursday that he would travel to Kinmen on Friday for events marking the 66th anniversary of a key military clash with Chinese forces, better known internationally as the start of the second Taiwan Strait crisis.

“Located in the first island chain, Taiwan faces the immediate threat of China. But Taiwan will not be intimidated,” Lai told a security forum in Taipei on Wednesday.

China views democratically-governed Taiwan as its own territory and has repeatedly denounced Lai as a “separatist.” He rejects Beijing’s sovereignty saying only Taiwan’s people can decide their future, but has also offered talks with China.

Kinmen faces the Chinese cities of Xiamen and Quanzhou and at its closest is less than two kilometers away from Chinese-controlled territory.

The 1958 crisis was the last time Taiwanese forces battled China on a large scale.  

In August of that year, Chinese forces began more than a month of bombardment of Kinmen, along with Matsu, including naval and air battles, seeking to force them into submission.

Taiwan fought back at the time with support from the United States, which sent military equipment like advanced Sidewinder anti-aircraft missiles, giving Taiwan a technological edge.

The crisis ended in a stalemate, and Taiwan observes Aug. 23 every year as the date it fended off the Chinese attack.

Late Wednesday, Taiwan’s defense ministry held a concert in Taipei that celebrated the “glorious” anniversary, with songs about shooting down Chinese MiG fighter jets and bemoaning the “red catastrophe” of communism.

Formerly called Quemoy in English, Kinmen today is a popular tourist destination, though Taiwan maintains a significant military presence.
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TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan’s defense spending will rise 7.7% next year, outpacing expected economic growth, the Cabinet said on Thursday, as the island adds more fighter jets and missiles to strengthen deterrence against a rising threat from Beijing.

China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, has ramped up military and political pressure over the past five years to assert those claims, which Taipei strongly rejects.

Taiwan’s Cabinet said following a regular weekly meeting that 2025 defense spending would rise 7.7% year-on-year to $20.25 billion, accounting for 2.45% of gross domestic product and exceeding the government’s expectation for economic growth of 3.26% for the year.

The spending includes a special budget worth $2.8 billion to buy new fighter jets and ramp up missile production. That was part of the military’s extra spending worth $7.5 billion announced in 2021 over five years.

Taiwan’s government has made military modernization a key policy platform and has repeatedly pledged to spend more on its defenses given the rising threat from China, including developing made-in-Taiwan submarines.

China’s air force flies almost daily missions into the skies near Taiwan, and in May staged war games around the island shortly after President Lai Ching-te took office, a man Beijing brands a “separatist.” Lai rejects China’s sovereignty claims, saying only Taiwan’s people can decide their future.

The budget will still need to be passed by parliament, where the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost its majority in January elections.

Taiwan’s main opposition party, the Kuomintang, has repeatedly expressed its support for firming up the island’s defenses, though it is currently involved in a standoff with the DPP about contested reforms to give parliament greater oversight powers the government says is unconstitutional.

China is also rapidly modernizing its armed forces, with new aircraft carriers, stealth fighter jets and missiles.

China in March announced a 7.2% rise in defense spending for this year to $234.10 billion outpacing the economic growth target of around 5% for 2024, though accounting for only some 1.3% of GDP according to analysts. 
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WASHINGTON — A New York man was charged on Wednesday with operating as an illegal agent of the Chinese government in the United States, accusing him of spying on Chinese pro-Democracy activists and dissidents, the Justice Department said.

The DOJ alleges that Yuanjun Tang, 67, acted as a Chinese agent between 2018 and 2023 at the direction of China’s Ministry of State Security, its principal intelligence agency.

Tang gave to MSS intelligence officers information about individuals and groups viewed by China “as potentially adverse” to its interests, including prominent U.S.-based Chinese dissidents, the DOJ said.

He helped MSS infiltrate a group chat on an encrypted messaging application used by numerous Chinese dissidents, the DOJ said.

Tang is also accused of making false statements to the FBI when he claimed he was no longer able to access an email account used to communicate with his MSS handler, the department said.

Tang is a former Chinese citizen who was imprisoned for his activities as a dissident, according to the department. He was granted political asylum in the U.S. and later became a citizen.

The Chinese Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reuters was unable to contact Tang.
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WASHINGTON — Two U.S. Pacific territories are moving closer to a status upgrade from observer to associate member, elevating their status within the region’s political and economic policy organization, the Pacific Islands Forum.

The PIF leaders’ meeting is set to open Monday in Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa.

Tongan Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni has confirmed there will be a vote on new associate members. “Guam and American Samoa have applied,” he told ABC Pacific recently. “We’ll be actually tabling a paper for the leaders to consider.”

Foreign ministers from the Pacific bloc reviewed the applications for associate member status from the two U.S. territories during their meeting on August 9. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown noted that there is “widespread support” for the applications.

On Tuesday, forum leaders will engage in talks with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, associate members and forum observers. A senior State Department official will represent the United States.

The Pacific Islands Forum has 18 member states, with Australia and New Zealand being the largest economies in the bloc. Neither the United States nor China is a full member, but both countries are dialogue partners.

U.S. greenlights

Until recently, U.S. Pacific territories Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands held observer status for the forum.

In June, however, the U.S. government eased restrictions, allowing these territories to join the PIF as nonvoting associate members, provided they do not take foreign policy positions. This change modified a longstanding policy that had previously barred their participation in international organizations.

Although the French territories of French Polynesia and New Caledonia have become full PIF members, analysts currently do not anticipate that U.S. Pacific territories will be approved for full membership soon.

“It would be a bit like Nebraska voting at the United Nations,” Cleo Paskal, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told VOA.

“The degree to which constituent parts of the U.S., such as Guam and American Samoa, can participate as full members in multilateral organizations is complex,” she said. “On one hand, the people of those islands understandably want to be represented in a forum that claims to speak for the region. On the other, they can’t legally sign up to foreign policy positions for the U.S.”

U.S.-PIF summit

A State Department spokesperson told VOA that the United States has made broader and deeper engagement with the Pacific Islands a key priority of its foreign policy.

The spokesperson cited the U.S.-hosted summit meetings with Pacific Island leaders in Washington in September 2022 and 2023.

But neither the White House nor the State Department would confirm whether a third U.S.-Pacific Island Forum summit will take place this year.

In recent years, U.S. policymakers have recognized that U.S. presence and influence in the Pacific cannot be taken for granted, especially in the face of increased Chinese interest and engagement in the region, according to Kathryn Paik, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Paik recently wrote in a CSIS publication that Washington’s realization has led to a series of high-level visits, the opening of several new embassies, the return of the Peace Corps to the region, and numerous financial initiatives across the fisheries, health, law enforcement and economic sectors.
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JAKARTA, Indonesia — A flood of Chinese products into Indonesia has hit local manufacturers hard, prompting the government to look for ways to placate domestic producers while avoiding angering the country’s biggest trading partner.

Garment makers — both home-based piecework producers and factories — have appealed for help as they lose market share to low-cost apparel and textiles from China. A surge of products bought online has added to the problem.

A protest by workers in Jakarta prompted Indonesian Minister of Trade Zulkifli Hasan to announce in July that the government will impose import tariffs of up to 200% on some products from China, particularly textiles, clothing, footwear, electronics, ceramics and cosmetics, to try to protect local businesses and prevent layoffs.

“The United States can impose a 200% tariff on imported ceramics or clothes, so we can do it as well,” Zulkifli said, to ensure micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises and industries “survive and thrive.”

But China is Indonesia’s largest trading partner, with two-way trade exceeding $127 billion in 2023. Imposing higher tariffs could prompt Chinese manufacturers to invest in more in factories in Indonesia, but could also backfire, leading Beijing to retaliate. As a result, the government announced in July that it was setting up a task force to monitor and handle problems related to certain imports.

It’s an urgent matter, Hasan said, given the flood of imported products that has caused closures of textile factories and mass layoffs. From January to July 2024, at least 12 textile factories shut down operations, causing more than 12,000 workers to lose their jobs, according to the Nusantara Trade Union Confederation.

In Bandung district in Indonesia’s West Java province — an area famous for textiles such as batiks, handwoven fabrics and silks — imports of Chinese products have left thousands of workers idle and without regular incomes, said Neng Wati, a manager at manufacturing company Asnur Konveksi.

“Now they take turns. The number of workers stays the same, but the work is divided up and not all get some. Some of them have been off for two weeks, some of them haven’t gotten work for a month,” Wati said.

That’s a hard blow coming after the slow days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many workers were shifted to e-commerce to make ends meet, said Nandi Herdiaman, head of a local organization of small- and medium-sized entrepreneurs. Only 60% of the 8,000 members of the association kept working after the pandemic.

Now, the biggest challenge is cheap imports from China. In the past two months, output from home-based industries has fallen by 70%, the industry organization says.

The uptick in imports of Chinese products is partly seen as the result of trade friction between the U.S. and China, which has led to increased American tariffs on Chinese goods. But it also reflects rising trade within Asia as the region implements various free trade pacts, as well as weakening demand in Western markets for Chinese exports.

Industry groups in Thailand have also expressed increasing concern about an influx of cheap products from China, which they say have greatly hurt sales by domestic producers who are unable to compete.

In what it called an urgent measure, the Thai government imposed a 7% value-added tax on all imported products, a change from the previous rule that only collected taxes on imported products that cost more than 1,500 baht ($44). The policy is only in effect from July until December this year to give the government time to study the issue before a longer-term solution can be applied.

In December, Indonesia issued a regulation to tighten monitoring of more than 3,000 imported goods, including food ingredients, electronics and chemicals. But the regulation was reversed after domestic industry said it hindered the flow of imported materials needed for local production, and the government began considering steep tariff hikes instead.

While smaller manufacturers have suffered the greatest setbacks, big factories are also hurting.

Jany Suhertan, managing director of PT Eksonindo Multi Product Industry, which makes clothing and accessories like backpacks and handbags in West Java, wants the government to raise import duties on finished goods from China but not on raw materials needed to make products in Indonesia.

Nearly half of the materials his company uses are from China.

“I don’t agree with imposing (higher tariffs) on raw products, since the government should protect the supply chain. If it is not secure, it will impact production,” Suhertan said.
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tokyo — During his term, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has transformed Japan’s defense posture amid growing threats from China, Russia and North Korea.

After nearly three years in power, however, Kishida is set to leave office, having announced earlier this month that he would not run in September’s election to lead his ruling Liberal Democratic Party, amid low approval ratings and corruption allegations within the LDP. 

At question is whether his successor will build on that legacy or take Japan in a new direction. Regardless, Kishida said he would support the new leader.

War anniversary

Kishida marked the 79th anniversary of his country’s defeat in World War II on Thursday, leading a solemn ceremony in Tokyo alongside Japanese Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako.

Speaking to delegates in what will likely be one of his last major public events, Kishida reiterated Japan’s long-held position on its devastating 1945 defeat.

“We must never again repeat the devastation of war. Although 79 years have now passed, no matter how time flows, we will remain committed to this resolute pledge, passing it down across generations,” Kishida said.

But his speech also reflected Japan’s changing role on the global stage.

“Japan will do its utmost to resolve the various challenges facing the world as it works to maintain and strengthen the free and open international order based on the rule of law while placing human dignity at the very center. In this way, we will carve out the future of our nation,” he added.

Global challenges

Japan lies at the intersection of several of those global challenges, and Kishida’s successor will likely continue his approach to defense and security, said Tomohiko Taniguchi, an adviser to the late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and now a special adviser at Fujitsu Future Studies Center.

“The scope of options for Japan is indeed narrow because of the troubling neighborhood that Japan finds itself in,” Taniguchi told VOA.

“Russia, North Korea and China — three of the nuclear-powered [armed] nations — none of which has exercised anything akin to open democracy. And all three of those countries are all fostering hostility and hate, intentionally and institutionally, towards Japan and the U.S.-Japan alliance,” he said.

Ukraine ties

Shortly after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Kishida warned that “Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow,” a statement that appeared to resonate with many regional allies.

The Japanese leader forged close ties with Kyiv, visiting the town of Bucha in 2023, where Russian troops are alleged to have committed war crimes, including mass killings and rape. Moscow denies the charges, despite widespread evidence.

Kishida then invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to attend the 2023 G7 summit in Hiroshima.

Under Kishida’s leadership, Japanese lawmakers approved a doubling of defense spending by 2027. He forged closer alliances with regional allies, and in July, successfully negotiated an upgrade of the United States’ military command in Japan.

South Korea

Over the past two years, Japan’s Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol overcame historical grievances to forge a close alliance. 

In a joint statement issued Sunday, the United States, Japan and South Korea reaffirmed their pledge made a year ago at a historic trilateral summit at Camp David.

“We stand by our commitment to consult on regional challenges, provocations and threats affecting our collective interests and security,” the statement said.

But uncertainties remain, said analyst Taniguchi.

“There is no assurance whatsoever that the improved South Korea-Japan relationship is going to continue as it is. President Yoon has passed the midpoint of his term. The rest of his term is going to be increasingly a lame-duck administration. The opposition parties are sniffing blood already — and the easiest target for the opposition party is to say that the incumbent administration is too weak vis-a-vis Japan,” Taniguchi told VOA.

Likely successor?

Kishida has no obvious successor. Several LDP lawmakers, including numerous government ministers, are expected to put themselves forward for the Sept. 27 vote for the party presidency. 

“There are some (candidates) who have shown uneasiness… as if Japan was a puppet of the Big Brother of the United States,” Taniguchi said.

Japan’s next prime minister will also have to win over the Japanese public and rebuild trust that has been eroded by a recent scandal over political funds.

“The public supports in principle are boosting Japan’s defenses and the defense budget hikes, but they are actually unwilling to pay higher personal taxes in order to do so,” said Yee Kuang Heng, a professor of international relations at the University of Tokyo. 

He added that the Japanese public now largely accepts the need for a stronger defense capability, “but nevertheless remains quite cautious about a more aggressive military posture.”

Global reaction

The United States’ ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel, wrote on X that Kishida had “helped build a latticework of security alliances and partnerships across the Indo-Pacific region that will stand the test of time.”

Beijing, meanwhile, said it would work to build a constructive and stable China-Japan relationship with Kishida’s successor.

The next prime minister will require staying power, Taniguchi said, “because the next five, six or seven years is going to be crucial for this ongoing long game between China and Japan. And nothing can be achievable for a prime minister who stays in office only for one or two years.” 

He added, “So, the next prime minister has got to come up with a good plan with which he or she could stay in office, manage difficult tasks, strengthen Japan’s alliance networks, and beef up Japan’s defense spending.”
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