Japan and China both have legitimate security concerns. But an informed debate needs major media outlets to stop systematically erasing the historical context that shapes how the region understands current events.

A repost from 21 November 2025

When Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told parliament that a Chinese military move against Taiwan could constitute a 存立危機事態 (sonritsu kiki jitai, “survival-threatening situation”) for Japan, some big Western media outlets uniformly framed China’s furious response as irrational overreaction.

The New York Times called it a return to "wolf warrior diplomacy." The Wall Street Journal dismissed Beijing as “ picking a fight.” The Age characterised it as a “ fire hose of Chinese rage” over “three words.”

What none of these outlets adequately explained is why those three words matter so much – and why their failure to provide this context represents a dangerous form of historical amnesia that distorts our understanding of East Asian security dynamics.

存立危機事態 (“survival-threatening situation”) is not generic security language. It is a legal term from Japan’s 2015 security legislation that allows Japan to deploy its Self-Defence Forces when “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 people’s right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”

To China, the conceptual framework of “existential threat to Japan’s survival” directly echoes the justification language Imperial Japan employed for its most catastrophic acts of aggression in the 20th century.

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