Chinese leader Xi Jinping used his closed-door talks with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House to attack Japan's military buildup and warn against its "militarism," Japan's Sankei Shimbun reported on October 4, citing Western intelligence sources. The newspaper said Trump did not take up the subject.
Xi had already made a version of the point in public. At the White House state dinner on September 24, according to the full toast published by China's Foreign Ministry, he told his hosts: "More than 80 years ago, the Chinese and American peoples fought side by side against Japanese militarist aggressors." He went on to recall Chinese civilians and soldiers who rescued American airmen, calling it a friendship "forged in blood and fire."
Sankei Reports Xi Targeted Japan In Private Talks
According to the Sankei, Xi spent considerable time on Japan during the talks held the same day. He reportedly described Japan's rising defense spending as "arms expansion," voiced alarm that Tokyo is reopening debate on its Three Non-Nuclear Principles (a postwar pledge not to possess, produce, or permit the introduction of nuclear weapons), urged Washington to watch for "militarist" tendencies in Japan, and accused Japan of dodging responsibility for its wartime aggression against China.
Trump reportedly did not engage. He said Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi was a friend of his and that he did not want to say much, then steered the conversation elsewhere. The report added that Beijing had hoped for a joint document from the summit, which Washington declined, and that neither side's published list of outcomes mentions Japan.
Caution is warranted. None of this appears in either government's official record, and the only sourcing is Western intelligence officials speaking to a Japanese newspaper. It is best read as diplomatic intelligence obtained by the Sankei, not a confirmed account of the meeting.
A similar episode surfaced in May. The Financial Times, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that Xi had angrily criticized Takaichi and Japan's "remilitarization" during talks in Beijing, and China's Foreign Ministry promptly denied it. Both accounts rest on anonymous sources and neither appears in an official readout. What Beijing has said about Japan in public this year, however, is on the record.
Beijing Has Used The Militarism Label Since January
The Communist Party's flagship newspaper, the People's Daily, set the tone on January 9 with a commentary under its "Zhong Sheng" byline, a pen name used for authoritative foreign-policy pieces. Its title: "'New Militarism' Will Lead Japan Into the Abyss Again." The article said Takaichi's government had "deviated from the postwar path of peace," pointing to record defense budgets, an alleged scheme to revise the non-nuclear principles, and three national security documents that, it argued, speak only of preparing for war.
Xinhua followed on April 22 with a commentary headlined "Dangerous Puzzle," laying out Japan's military moves piece by piece: a record defense budget, the lifting of limits on lethal weapons exports, hints that the non-nuclear principles may be abandoned, the deployment of long-range missiles able to strike enemy bases, and wrong signals on historical issues. The final piece was a Japanese warship's passage through the Taiwan Strait.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said at a May 22 briefing that Japan was "stripping away, layer by layer, its so-called 'peaceful nation' disguise" and "stepping onto the wrong path of 'new militarism.'" In mid-June, People's Daily Online argued that as Japan prepares to revise its security documents at the end of the year, it is shifting from an "exclusively defense-oriented" posture toward "preemptive strike."
Set against that record, the four themes Xi reportedly raised (military expansion, the non-nuclear principles, militarism, and responsibility for wartime aggression) look like the line that state media and the Foreign Ministry have repeated all year, delivered this time to Trump.
Beijing's Complaints Track Real Japanese Policy Moves
Each item on Beijing's list corresponds to a documented step by Tokyo. Japan's Ministry of Finance data show defense-related spending for fiscal 2026 topping 9 trillion yen. The Takaichi government reached the target of 2% of GDP in defense-related outlays a year early, helped by a supplementary budget for fiscal 2025. At the end of March, the Ground Self-Defense Force deployed the first upgraded Type 12 surface-to-ship missiles in Kumamoto, part of the "counterstrike capability" built around long-range standoff weapons. Outside estimates put their range at roughly 1,000 kilometers, though Japan's Defense Ministry has not published an official figure.
In April, Takaichi's cabinet revised Japan's rules on transferring defense equipment so that lethal weapons can be exported. That same month, a Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer sailed through the Taiwan Strait on its own, on the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, under which Qing China ceded Taiwan to Japan in 1895. The pillar of the non-nuclear principles that bars nuclear weapons from being brought into Japan is also being re-examined in the discussions on revising the security documents.
Beijing's reading of all this was spelled out at a Foreign Ministry briefing last November. Spokeswoman Mao Ning said Japan's postwar constitution pledged to renounce war, yet Tokyo was now citing an "existential crisis" to justify involvement in the Taiwan Strait. "Invading other countries in the name of a so-called 'existential crisis' and 'self-defense' is a familiar trick of Japanese militarism," she said, citing the 1931 Manchurian Incident and Pearl Harbor as examples. A December essay on the website of Qiushi, the Communist Party's main theory journal, tied Taiwan into the argument: Japan "occupied Taiwan for 50 years," the Cairo Declaration provided for Taiwan's return to China, and "the Taiwan question is the core of China's core interests."
In that framework, Takaichi's parliamentary answer, the defense budget, long-range missiles, arms exports, the non-nuclear principles, and the history dispute are one story. Japan rejects the logic, but it is coherent inside China, and it is the case Xi was able to carry to Trump.
Takaichi's Taiwan Remark Is Only The Trigger
The dispute began last November, when Takaichi told Japan's parliament that a conflict in the Taiwan Strait could amount to a "survival-threatening situation." The term comes from Japan's security legislation and describes an attack on a country closely tied to Japan that also threatens Japan's own survival, a circumstance in which the Self-Defense Forces may use force. Beijing read the remark as a sign that Tokyo is preparing to intervene. Storm Media has followed each step of the row in a timeline of the Japan-China standoff over Takaichi's remarks.
But the complaints Beijing lists are not limited to that one sentence. Most of the policies were already moving before her answer, and her remark gave Beijing a way to string them into a single question. If a conflict breaks out in the Strait, whether Japan lets U.S. forces use its bases, whether the Self-Defense Forces join the fighting, and how residents of the southwestern islands are evacuated would all shift from paper policy to live decisions. The plan Tokyo published last year calls for moving about 120,000 residents and tourists from the Sakishima Islands to Kyushu within six days. That is why Beijing uses her sentence as the entry point for a much broader indictment.
Taipei Objects, But Has No Seat At The Table
After the Xi-Trump meeting, China's Foreign Ministry readout said Xi hoped Washington would "uphold its correct position of opposing 'Taiwan independence' and handle the Taiwan question prudently." The White House list of outcomes did not mention Taiwan at all. Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded that Beijing was "unilaterally conveying its own position and claims" and that "the CCP regime has no right to represent the Taiwanese people." Two days later it added that there was never any need for U.S.-China dialogue to discuss Taiwan, and that U.S. policy toward Taiwan had not changed.
The Mainland Affairs Council, which sets Taiwan's policy toward China, addressed the history in Xi's toast. It said Beijing's World War II narrative "completely distorts historical facts" and that "the one that truly fought alongside the United States was the Republic of China." The People's Republic, founded in 1949, did not exist during the war. Lee Yen-hsiu, a lawmaker from the opposition Kuomintang, spoke to the present: "At the new U.S.-China consensus table, Taiwan is not in a seat, and cannot even make out the menu."
Taipei's own reading of Takaichi's remark is more cautious than outsiders might expect. Deputy Foreign Minister Wu Chih-chung said last November that her statement followed Japan's established position of strategic ambiguity and "cannot be directly interpreted as Japan will help defend Taiwan." He added that Taiwan has no plans for a formal military alliance with Japan. Beijing treats the "Taiwan contingency" remark as evidence that Japan is ready to intervene; Taiwan's own government does not read it that way.
Beijing raised the question of if and when Japan might intervene in a Taiwan Strait conflict in Washington. Japan is rewriting its own security documents, and the United States is urging the two sides to talk. Taiwan is on the agenda but has no seat.
Beijing Courts Tokyo While Criticizing It In Washington
The Yomiuri Shimbun and Reuters, both citing Japanese government officials, reported that Trump urged Xi to talk directly with Japan. Four days after the summit, Foreign Minister Wang Yi received former Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya in Beijing. On Takaichi's remark, Wang asked Tokyo to "correct" it rather than "withdraw" it, a wording that has been softening since May.
Akio Takahara, a University of Tokyo scholar, said on a TBS program that China had gained nothing from a year of hard-line pressure on Japan while its economy slows, so Beijing has drawn back the curtains but not yet opened the door.
These moves do not contradict Xi's complaints in Washington. On trade and people-to-people exchanges, Beijing is looking for a way back. On politics and security, its assessment of Japan has not changed, and it has now voiced that assessment in front of Trump.
Shenzhen Summit And Japan's Security Rewrite Come Next
The next milestone is the APEC summit in Shenzhen in mid-November. Even if Xi and Takaichi do sit down, Beijing's public rhetoric this year suggests it will want to discuss far more than her parliamentary answer. The other date is the year-end revision of Japan's three national security documents. Whether they touch defense spending levels or the non-nuclear principles will supply the material for Beijing's next round of arguments against Tokyo.
👉 A Timeline of the Japan-China Standoff Over Takaichi's Remarks
