None of the South China Sea’s atolls is as disputed as the Scarborough Shoal, which lies in the Philippines’s exclusive economic zone, but which China claims as its own. On Sunday, Philippine defense secretary Gilbert Teodoro warned that China may be preparing to take permanent control.
China’s response was predictable. Its U.S. Embassy was quick to admonish Teodoro, claiming “indisputable sovereignty” over the shoal. Authoritarian states leverage their diplomatic channels to bend the truth, but China is unrivaled in the art of highly reactive propaganda.
Both the government itself and state-owned media are adept at flooding the zone with English-language journalism that clogs up search engines and sways the unsuspecting.
WILL CHINA MIRROR IRAN’S HORMUZ BLOCKADE STRATEGY?
Or at least we thought it was just the unsuspecting. Contrary to logic, recent Chinese attack lines have been amplified by a small but alarmingly significant portion of foreign policy commentators.
“Japan’s defense outline claiming China a ‘grave concern’ is a well-worn trick to portray itself as a victim for militaristic expansion: Chinese expert,” screeched a recent headline in the state-run Global Times.
The piece rehashed the new but already tired myth that Japan, the pacifist nation, is an aggressor state, whereas China, which is adding 100 nuclear warheads per year to its stockpile of approximately 600 and maintains a fleet of strategic bombers, is the peacenik.
Needless to say, Japan, which has consistently followed a path as a peace-loving nation, possesses neither nuclear weapons nor strategic bombers.
An article in the East Asia Forum, a niche but influential foreign policy platform, seemed to amplify this reasoning. The piece discouraged Japanese rearmament. Yes, China is a military behemoth that wishes its neighbor ill. But no, Japan was wrong to stand firm on its alliance with the U.S. in response. Instead, the piece suggested, laughably, that Japan could join “joint exercises with China on search and rescue missions and responses to maritime disasters.”
Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi made a mockery of this reasoning in his speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in May, a premier gathering of heads of government and defense officials, hosted in Singapore. “Isn’t it strange?” Koizumi asked his audience that Japan, with neither nuclear weapons nor strategic bombers, stands accused by “a country” (no guesses as to which one) of militaristic intent.
Koizumi’s remarks got very good international press. The security community at large recognizes that Japan’s new government, led by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and Koizumi, has arrested the nation from its ‘end of history’ slump to face down this new fractious age of geopolitics.
This ambition is being matched with hard cash. Japan’s annual defense budget stood at just over 7.72 trillion yen (approximately $50 billion) when Takaichi took office in October 2025. Within just six months, it reached nearly 11 trillion yen (more than $57 billion), two years ahead of schedule.
Japan is definitely militarizing, from a very low base, but it does so in the face of a clear threat and with a high degree of transparency. China’s ambition to change the status quo in the Indo-Pacific is naked.
In this context, the idea that bolstered defense spending equates to aggressive Japanese militarization is clearly absurd. The perpetrators of this illogic should note that China’s annual military budget, up 7% this year alone, now stands above $275 billion. This is essentially five times that of Japan’s.
In the face of revisionism, Japan deserves credit for its proactive multilateralism. The U.S.-Japan alliance is indispensable to Indo-Pacific security. The Trump administration called on Japan to shoulder more of the burden for its own defense, and Japan obliged. In doing so, it won the rare praise of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth at this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed, first, that China will not be allowed to threaten the security of the U.S. and its allies, and second, in his meeting with Koizumi, that the U.S.’s commitment to Asia is unwavering.
The linchpin of the U.S.’s Indo-Pacific strategy, Japan’s industrial and diplomatic prestige attracts partners across the region. In April, the Takaichi government overhauled long-standing export rules to free itself to bolster the military capabilities of like-minded partners. Eleven Mogami-class frigates were quickly purchased by a grateful Australia in a landmark $7 billion deal.
The Iran quagmire has no doubt sapped American willpower (and firepower) in Asia. Japan is showing it can pick up the slack. Embraced by its “Quad” partners, the U.S., India, and Australia, FOIP has long been an economic and diplomatic framework. To fit the times, the Takaichi government has given it military muscle.
DOES CHINA HAVE A SMART OR DUMB DIPLOMACY?
The European powers, Germany, the United Kingdom, and France, struggle for effectiveness, but their politics have shifted in the same direction. Are Friedrich Merz, Keir Starmer, and Emmanuel Macron nationalistic warmongers? The proposition is laughable, but that’s the charge against Takaichi by some misguided lights.
Let’s be clear: In a dangerous age, where Chinese rhetoric is increasingly matched by dangerous acts, Japan is right to prepare to fight.
Derek Grossman is a professor at the University of Southern California.