From the Kuril Islands to China: Japan caught in the grip of Moscow and Beijing

Whilst Beijing’s diplomatic missions in Europe are promoting travel to China, both for tourism and business, according to the Japanese daily Mainichi, since the start of the summer several Japanese citizens, including executives of companies with offices in China, have reportedly been arrested by the Beijing authorities. China has stepped up ‘scrutiny’ of Japanese companies operating in the country for political reasons, linked to statements made by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi regarding Taiwan, and has justified these measures as part of investigations into alleged breaches of Chinese restrictions on the export of dual-use goods. But the Japanese are not the only ones affected. According to the latest figures from Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, since the start of the year, 415 Taiwanese citizens have gone missing, been detained, interrogated or imprisoned in China.

This has been a topic of discussion in Asia for some time: the People’s Republic of China is beginning to use arbitrary detentions in the same way as Vladimir Putin’s Russia, that is, for political and diplomatic purposes. The first case to make international headlines was that of the two Canadian citizens, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, who were arrested in 2018 and released in 2021 in exchange for the release of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei. But five years on from the conclusion of that episode, Beijing’s coercive power has expanded, and it is testing the reactions and resistance of democratic nations. Arrests and intimidation targeting Japanese businesspeople have increased in tandem with inspections of company premises and the questioning of employees of Japanese firms in China. In some cases, according to the Mainichi, Japanese nationals were reportedly detained immediately upon entering the country, apparently with the aim of securing their cooperation in investigations. The expansion of these controls is a punishment meted out to the Japanese government, which has ventured the suggestion of mobilising its Self-Defence Forces in the event of an armed attack on the island of Taiwan; but it is an exemplary punishment: any country could fall victim to China’s retaliatory tactics. In this regard, the Tokyo government has been left rather isolated by both its G7 partners and Europe, despite their shared enemies: yesterday, the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin – aligning himself with Beijing’s anti-Japanese propaganda – stated in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, during a visit to the island of Sakhalin in the Russian Far East to observe exercises by the Russian Pacific Fleet, that it is Japan that is making territorial claims against Russia, and not the other way round: “I am referring to the issue of the Kuril Islands,” said Putin – which Tokyo refers to as the Northern Territories – adding that Russian control over the islands is “a reality that emerged at the end of the Second World War and was enshrined in international documents”. According to Japan’s Defence White Paper, published last week, in the 2025 financial year alone, fighter jets of the Japan Air Self-Defence Force carried out 595 scrambles, of which 366 were in response to Chinese aircraft and 214 to Russian aircraft. Although this figure is down from the 704 recorded the previous year, it remains significant as it exceeds the total of over 500 scrambles carried out by the air forces of NATO countries throughout the whole of 2025. The comparison is not entirely apples-to-apples, but it nevertheless provides a measure of the military pressure being exerted on Tokyo by Russia and China.

Beijing’s strategy of gradually escalating tensions with Japan is already becoming quite evident in Europe: two weeks ago, in retaliation for the EU’s new package of sanctions against Chinese companies involved in Russia’s war economy, China added 14 European companies to its export control blacklist. These include the German defence giant Rheinmetall and two Italian companies, one of which is Lafert, part of the Japanese Sumitomo Group.

European governments should pay particular attention to developments between China and Japan, not only as a matter of solidarity with a partner country facing increasing political, economic and military pressure, but also because the measures adopted by Beijing are instruments of coercion that could also be applied against other countries that adopt positions deemed hostile to Chinese interests. This includes arbitrary detentions.