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Japan defense white paper frames China as top strategic challenge for fourth year
The 2026 white paper also links Taiwan and wider East and South China Sea risks to a single threat, citing grey-zone blockades and “new forms of warfare.”
Japan’s 610-page 2026 defense white paper cements a shift in Tokyo’s outlook on Beijing, labeling China an “unprecedented and the greatest strategic challenge” for the fourth straight year. The framing dates back to 2014, when an earlier Japanese white paper warned that China’s East China Sea air defense identification zone raised the risk of unintended incidents, according to the South China Morning Post.
The document also comes as Japan, Manila, and Seoul draw lessons from the Iran war and the depletion of US interceptors, which has led the Pentagon to reposition parts of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense and Patriot systems from South Korea to the Middle East. SCMP reports that Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has not changed the trajectory, and is accelerating the policy direction.
Japanese Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi’s remarks about a Pacific “defence vacuum” are presented as reinforcement of Beijing’s concerns that Tokyo is filling a gap Washington appears to have left. The white paper argues Beijing’s drills around Taiwan are aimed at normalizing military presence as a fait accompli, while Beijing counters that they are needed to protect sovereignty, SCMP says.
SCMP adds that the white paper warns of grey-zone blockades and a tilting cross-strait balance, and that it frames East and South China Sea and Taiwan Strait challenges as a single threat. It also calls China-Russia patrols “demonstration activities,” includes a chapter on “new forms of warfare” drawing on Ukraine drone and artificial intelligence lessons, and describes defense production in terms that would embed militarization into Japan’s economy, SCMP reports.