A superpower that still feels small
China is the world’s second-largest economy and a growing military power, yet beneath the confidence project, a different story runs: a state—and a society—that often behaves as if it is under siege. That, at least, is the provocative thesis advanced by veteran China-watcher Kazuaki Takeda in his new book, “What Japanese Should Know About China” (Tatsumi Publishing). His core claim is striking: China’s leaders, including Xi Jinping, and ordinary citizens alike carry a deep sense of vulnerability. Japan, for its part, harbors its own historical anxieties toward China and its complicated reliance on the United States. The resulting dynamic, Takeda argues, is not a simple contest of strong versus weak but a “weak versus weak” standoff shaping Northeast Asia’s future.
China’s rise by the numbers—and the insecurity behind it
By any metric, China’s economic ascent is monumental. Its GDP stood at roughly 67.9 billion yuan in 1952, rose to 367.9 billion yuan in 1978 as reform and opening began, and surpassed 126 trillion yuan in 2023. In constant prices, that implies a 224-fold expansion. China’s share of the global economy climbed from 1.7 percent in 1978 to around 17 percent in 2023, and the country contributed an annual average of 24.8 percent to global growth from 1979 to 2023, the highest worldwide, according to research by Nikkei BP’s think tank. Yet, as Takeda frames it, many Chinese still do not see themselves as “strong.” Public bravado and official triumphalism coexist with a persistent self-preservation mindset—one shaped by historical trauma and institutional fragility. The People’s Republic was forged as a socialist state, and the disasters of the Mao-era Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 70s left the economy devastated. The subsequent decades saw Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin graft market mechanisms onto socialist structures in a pragmatic attempt to get the country moving again. That hybrid system delivered growth—but it also reinforced an awareness within the party-state that its economic foundations can be brittle.
Takeda argues that this siege mentality shows up in the prevalence of corruption as a kind of “insurance.” Local governments parcel land at steep discounts, officials skim through kickbacks, and graft proves stubbornly difficult to end because it is rooted in the belief that one must protect oneself against a capricious system. Xi Jinping’s sweeping anti-corruption campaign has been relentless—China’s top discipline watchdog has investigated and punished millions of officials since 2012—yet headlines about new cases appear weekly. The risk-hedging instinct persists, he suggests, because many officials still feel like targets, not stewards of a secure order.
Japan’s long memory of a larger neighbor
Japan’s own insecurities are older, etched into the country’s historical interactions with the continent. Starting in the sixth and seventh centuries, Japan sent envoys to the Sui and Tang dynasties to learn Chinese systems, literature, and statecraft. The adoption of Chinese characters transformed governance and culture. But admiration lived alongside fear. The Mongol-led Yuan’s failed invasions in the 13th century—remembered in Japan as the Genkō—brought the specter of annihilation to Japanese shores. For centuries, China was the larger, more advanced civilization. That asymmetry left a cultural imprint in Japan: respect, rivalry, and latent anxiety.
Takeda describes a mutual wariness that remains. In his telling, Chinese elites keep a wary eye on Japan, sometimes expressing a “ressentiment” toward a neighbor whose modern prosperity and alliance network complicate China’s regional ambitions. Japan, meanwhile, carries a reflexive fear of the Chinese colossus. Each side, he argues, calibrates policy through a lens of vulnerability, not mastery.
An alliance that baffles Beijing
One of the most common questions Takeda hears in China is why Japan remains so close to the United States. Many Chinese find the alignment psychologically puzzling, given wartime history. The atomic bombings killed an estimated 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki by the end of 1945. The Battle of Okinawa cost roughly 188,000 lives, including about 94,000 civilians. After 1945, Japan was occupied and later hosted a significant U.S. military presence that endures today. To many in China, that history makes Japan’s strategic embrace of Washington appear submissive or paradoxical.
Economic history deepens the confusion: the United States pushed voluntary export restraints on Japanese automobiles in the 1980s, and trade spats have repeatedly flared. Politicians in Tokyo who took sharper lines on U.S. trade friction were sometimes marginalized domestically—events that, in the eyes of some in China, hint at American heavy-handedness. Takeda notes that such views often oversimplify a complex story about Japan’s postwar choices. For Tokyo, the U.S. alliance has been a hard-headed bet on security and stability, even when frictions are real. But the optics—of a pacifist nation relying on the superpower that once devastated it—invite skepticism in Beijing.
Xi Jinping’s fear calculus
Takeda characterizes Xi as a cautious strategist with a default bias toward risk-aversion—what he calls “good” negative thinking. Xi’s public messages can be combative, designed for domestic consumption and deterrence. Privately, Takeda contends, the Chinese leader is acutely aware of the costs of miscalculation with the United States. Washington has, at times, used force or covert pressure against regimes it deemed threatening or abusive—citing episodes from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, and the U.S. operation that killed Osama bin Laden. In China, narratives that the U.S. aided unrest or “color revolutions” are common; many Chinese believe American hands were present in the 1989 Tiananmen protests or Hong Kong’s 2014 Umbrella Movement, though scholars debate those claims and hard evidence is contested. The point, Takeda argues, is not to prove conspiracy, but to grasp Beijing’s worldview: in a system where stability is paramount, perceived foreign subversion is a persistent fear.
Against that backdrop, Xi’s core calculation is straightforward: an outright war with the U.S. would be ruinous for China. Despite rapid military modernization, the capability gap—particularly in air and naval power projection, alliances, and combat experience—remains significant. Thus, Beijing talks tough, builds leverage, and probes the edges, but also seeks channels to manage competition. In recent months, Xi has alternated “wolf warrior” rhetoric with pragmatic engagement, including leader-level summits and confidence-restoring steps like reviving military-to-military communication. The performance of strength masks a strategy of caution.
Weak versus weak: a dangerous equilibrium
Takeda’s “weak vs. weak” frame offers a sobering twist on Asia’s security narrative. It suggests that the region’s most consequential relationship is governed less by raw dominance than by mutual insecurity. For China, that insecurity fuels ideological control, surveillance, and anti-graft purges—and a foreign policy that projects resolve to suppress doubts at home. For Japan, it manifests in the largest defense build-up in decades, new counterstrike capabilities outlined in its 2022 National Security Strategy, and tighter integration with the U.S. on technology, supply chains, and deterrence. Each side reads the other’s protective measures as aggression, amplifying a feedback loop of suspicion.
Breaking that loop will be difficult. China’s growth is slowing amid a property slump and demographic headwinds, potentially heightening the leadership’s sensitivity to external shocks. Japan is navigating economic security laws, semiconductor realignments, and debates over constitutional constraints on the Self-Defense Forces. Taiwan remains the most combustible flashpoint, and maritime frictions in the East and South China Seas persist. Yet, if both Beijing and Tokyo truly act from a place of vulnerability, there may be room for calibrated de-escalation: greater crisis communications, concrete guardrails at sea and in the air, and selective cooperation on transnational issues like climate and disaster relief.
About the journalist behind the thesis
Kazuaki Takeda, born in 1966 in Tokyo, is a Waseda University graduate and a former TBS political correspondent once nicknamed the “Prince of the Diet” for his fluency in parliamentary coverage. A familiar face on the political segment of the variety-news program Sunday Japon, he left TBS in June 2023 to work as a freelance journalist. Takeda studied at the Chinese University of Hong Kong while at university and later served as a Beijing correspondent for three and a half years. He still travels to China several times a year for reporting, building the on-the-ground perspective that informs his latest book, “What Japanese Should Know About China.”
Why this matters now
For policymakers and publics in the Indo-Pacific, the “weak vs. weak” lens does not minimize China’s power or Japan’s capabilities; it reframes them. It highlights how historical memory, institutional design, and domestic politics fuel perceptions of vulnerability that, in turn, shape external behavior. Appreciating that psychology helps explain Beijing’s mix of swagger and caution—and Tokyo’s combination of alliance dependence and hedging. In a year when U.S.–China relations lurch between confrontation and cautious stabilization, and when Japan deepens economic security ties even as it seeks channels to Beijing, Takeda’s analysis offers a reminder: the loudest voices in Asia may be trying to silence their own fears. Recognizing that could be the first step toward a steadier peace.
