P a c N e t 6 5 P A C I F I C F OR U M · H ON OLU LU , H I Se pt e mb e r 18 , 20 24

However, the Chinese market is not A poll conducted by the Tokyo-based Central as attractive to Japan as before because of the Research Services on the behalf of the Taipei difficulties in doing business there. [...] Perhaps it’s because of numbers like this that nearly According to Nakano Koichi, a professor in 60% of Taiwanese believe Japan would dispatch the comparative and Japanese politics at Tokyo’s Sophia Self-Defense Forces to come to their assistance in the University, “Abe even said that a war in Taiwan—a event of an attack by China, according to a 2021 ‘contingency in Taiwan’—would be Japan’s Taiwan. [...] “There is an expectation in Washington that Japan would intervene, and I think Japan has defense policies which lead up to the [the] political leadership of the Liberal Democratic passage of the 2015 Legislation for Peace and Party thinks they should intervene, but the public is Security and benefit Taiwan. [...] The bright spot of the JSDF is the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force (JMSDF), believed to be the strongest in the region after America’s and thus superior to China’s still underdeveloped but steadily growing naval forces. [...] If the leadership of Japan wishes to truly support Taiwan before a conflict starts, it must further reduce dependence on the Chinese market and make the JSDF a credible fighting force.