500. Japan, China, and the Fight for Taiwan (Question Time)
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Welcome to The Rest is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. Now, we've done three episodes, at least in recent days, on Labour and their current travails flowing from the Epstein files. So we're not going to talk about that in question time. We're going to talk about the Japanese election. Fascinating. We're going to talk about the presidential election in Portugal. Also fascinating. We have a little bit of sport, Rory. Yep. But the politics of sport. Okay. Winter Olympics. Yep. Super Bowl. Lovely. And then we might do something a bit lighter.
Lovely.
Later on. Lovely. Okay. All right. So should we try and be really disciplined and not talk about Labour? And should we try not to talk about Trump? Okay.
It could be hard, but we'll try. Okay. I'm not going to take your challenge on not mentioning Trump because the first question that we're getting is from Matthew Wright in Wiltshire, which is about Japan. What does Japan's election result mean for its relationship with China and tensions in the Pacific? I mean the beginning of the answer of course Matthew is that Taiwan has become the big flashpoint between China and Japan in this election because Sanae Takeuchi, who is the Japanese prime minister, has now said explicitly for the first time as Japanese prime minister that they would effectively go to war to defend Taiwan against China. And she is somebody who's seen as being closer to the man that you don't want to mention in this podcast and the US alliance.
Just this episode. And it's going to be weaponized a great deal And we'll get into that a bit later on the podcast, how the Chinese might perceive it. But first, tell us a little bit about this election.
Yeah. No, it's an incredible story, this. So, Sanae Takaichi is the first female prime minister in Japan. She's the leader of the LDP, this incredible party that has been in power kind of... all of my life and more, and is a sort of formidable political machine that's sort of been spluttering in recent years, and prime ministers falling over the edge, a lot of corruption, a lot of gerontocracy. And along comes Takaichi, and she takes over the leadership, She becomes prime minister for the third time of trying, and she's in power for 110 days. She does some really quite bold economic things. We'll talk about whether we think they're going to work or not. And then she calls a snap election. And she does three things that you're constantly told not to do.
Don't make the campaign so short that even your own campaign candidates can't prepare properly. She has a two-week campaign. Never do it in the middle of winter because people struggle to get to the polls. She does it in these massive slow falls. And don't do it when students are doing exams because particularly like her, when she's got a big appeal to young people, So she does all those things. Middle of winter, students off, and it's a snap election, literally a snap election.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–7:08
2
What does Japan's election result mean for its relationship with China?
7:08–8:17
3
Why is Taiwan a flashpoint in Japan-China relations?
8:17–11:41
4
How did Sanae Takaichi become Japan's first female prime minister?
11:41–17:06
5
What are the implications of Takaichi's election for Japan's political landscape?
17:06–38:09
6
How is the Chinese perspective on Japan evolving?
38:09–46:11
7
What are the economic implications of Takaichi's policies for Japan?
46:11–54:35
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The Rest Is Politics
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