Tokyo Report | Diplomacy | East Asia

Can a Takaichi Government Stabilize China-Japan Relations?

What Abe’s post-2014 rapprochement with Beijing can teach Tokyo today.

Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae (left) shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a meeting on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, Oct. 31, 2025.

China-Japan relations are at their most difficult point in years. Sharp exchanges between Tokyo and Beijing at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in late May underscored a relationship increasingly defined by strategic rivalry, mutual suspicion, and competing security narratives.

Many observers assume that Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae is poorly positioned to improve ties with China. Her hawkish reputation, outspoken views on Taiwan, and support for strengthening Japan’s defense capabilities have made her a frequent target of criticism from Beijing.

Yet there is a historical irony here.

Two decades ago, many Chinese officials and analysts held similarly negative views of then-Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. He was widely regarded as a conservative nationalist associated with Yasukuni Shrine and a more assertive Japanese security policy. Few expected him to become the leader who would eventually stabilize relations with Beijing, yet that’s exactly what happened.

That history raises an important question: Could Takaichi ultimately achieve what Abe did?

The answer may lie in the experience of the man who helped engineer Japan’s last major diplomatic thaw with China.

The Man Who Built the Last Bridge

Yachi Shotaro served as Japan’s vice foreign minister and later as the inaugural secretary-general of the National Security Secretariat under Abe. He played a central role in two separate diplomatic recoveries with Beijing, each beginning from a position that appeared irreparable.

On a television program aired on BS-TBS on June 2, Yachi reflected on those experiences and offered a frank assessment of where China-Japan relations stand today.

The first crisis emerged during the Koizumi Junichiro era, when the prime minister’s repeated visits to Yasukuni Shrine froze summit diplomacy entirely during the early 2000s.

Working closely with Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo, one of Beijing’s most influential foreign policy figures, Yachi sought to create political space for renewed dialogue. The breakthrough relied on deliberate ambiguity. Japanese officials conveyed that Abe, who was then preparing to succeed Koizumi, would neither pledge to visit Yasukuni nor publicly renounce doing so.

“The logic we used,” Yachi recalled, “was that from China’s perspective, not saying you will visit is essentially the same as not visiting.”

That ambiguity proved sufficient.

In October 2006, Abe traveled to Beijing in what became known as the “ice-breaking” visit. The two governments subsequently established the framework of a “Mutually Beneficial Relationship Based on Common Strategic Interests,” designed to expand cooperation while managing persistent disagreements.

The next rupture came in 2012, when Japan nationalized the Senkaku Islands (known as the Diaoyu Islands in China and Diaoyutai in Taiwan), triggering large-scale anti-Japanese protests across China and sending bilateral relations into freefall.

By then serving as Japan’s first national security advisor, Yachi conducted extensive negotiations with Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi.

The resulting four-point agreement ahead of the 2014 APEC summit in Beijing did not resolve the territorial dispute. Instead, both sides acknowledged that differing views existed and concentrated on building crisis-management mechanisms to prevent escalation.

The summit between Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping that followed was not reconciliation; it was stabilization.

“The achievement,” Yachi observed, “was not solving the problem but preventing it from getting worse.”

That lesson remains relevant today. The diplomatic breakthrough came when both governments concluded that continued deterioration serves neither side’s interests.

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