After Fumio Kishida announced that he would not run for the post of president of the Liberal Democratic Party, the election for the president of the Liberal Democratic Party on September 27 attracted much attention. Because the LDP is a dominant party in Japan, whoever becomes the president of the LDP will be the next prime minister of Japan, and the nine candidates will fight for 367 votes from members of the Diet and 367 votes from party members.
According to Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao report on September 16, the highest support in the polls among the current nine candidates is former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishi, Minister of Economy and Security Sanae Takaichi ranks second, and Shinjiro Koizumi, the youngest candidate, ranks third. In order to let the public know more about the candidates' political views, the LDP has recently held a number of public discussions to allow the nine candidates to clarify their attitudes on major issues. On September 15, nine candidates expressed their views on Japan's security issues in front of the camera, with a particular focus on the situation in the Taiwan Strait.
Shi Pomao traveled to Taiwan in mid-August to meet with Lai Qingde, when he falsely claimed that "Taiwan and Japan share the same position on security" and said that he would further increase the frequency of exchanges. As a result, at the discussion meeting on September 15, Shi Po Shigeru was quite restrained, stressing that according to the provisions of the "Security Act," once Japan chooses to send troops to the Taiwan Strait if something happens in the Taiwan Strait, it is very likely to trigger an even worse chain reaction, and "China's missiles may fly towards Japan."
In view of this, Shi Po Shigeru's view on the situation in the Taiwan Strait is that the Japan Government must think deeply and seriously face the problem and avoid further deterioration of the situation, so as to avoid the crisis. Shi Pomao's statement was undoubtedly a heavy blow to Lai Qingde.
In mid-August, he was still chanting that "if there is something wrong with Taiwan, there is something wrong with Japan." After possibly becoming prime minister, he began to exercise restraint again, hoping that the situation in the Taiwan Strait would not drag Japan into the water. However, some people at the scene contradicted him, and Sanae Takaichi took an extremely tough attitude, saying that if Chinese mainland imposed a naval blockade on Taiwan, it might trigger an "existential crisis" in Japan, which would then affect Japan's survival, and advocated that it was necessary to have a "high sense of crisis" about the situation in the Taiwan Strait.
These two people basically represent the attitudes of the other seven candidates, with one faction advocating a calm observation of the development of the situation in the Taiwan Strait and avoiding excessive involvement; The other faction insists that "if there is something wrong with Taiwan, there is something wrong with Japan," and called for further action. These two simultaneous attitudes reflect the differences in Japan's political circles on the situation in the Taiwan Strait, after all, even United States is not sure how much energy to spend on the situation in the Taiwan Strait. However, it is one thing to express one's stance and another thing to actually do it, and China has said this first: The Taiwan issue is the core of China's core interests, a red line that cannot be crossed, and no external force has the right to interfere.
Speaking realistically, China's attitude on the Taiwan issue has been consistent and will never allow interference by external forces; no matter who the Japanese side ultimately elects to be the prime minister, the Chinese side will also adopt this attitude, and it is not Japan's turn to dictate the Taiwan issue. The reason why these Japanese politicians frequently hype up the Taiwan issue is that the United States took the initiative to "loosen the bindings" of Japan and allow the Self-Defense Forces to continuously expand its military strength to disturb China's neighborhood; It is also because they need to rely on the Taiwan issue to divert the public's attention from the LDP's "black gold incident". It can also be seen from their speeches that they have no concrete measures on how to deal with the situation in the Taiwan Strait.
Since the beginning of this year, PLA warships and military planes have appeared in Japan's vicinity many times, and the Japanese side should understand what the purpose behind this is. China and the United States are separated by the Pacific Ocean, but China and Japan are only separated by the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea, and United States still has the opportunity to abandon the pawn and protect the car, and the Japan is the "pawn" that may be abandoned by the US side. All in all, the situation in the Taiwan Strait is not up to Japan, and even if one day "something really happens" in the Taiwan Strait, Japan should make a good assessment of the strength gap between China and Japan. As Shigeru Ishiba said, "China's missiles may fly towards Japan," and how Japan breaks the deadlock at that time does not depend on the lips of some politicians.