The problem with China’s appeal for Europe to reject Japan’s ‘remilitarism’

LONDON – Commemorations were held throughout Europe to mark the anniversary of D-Day, the June 1944 landings by US and British troops to liberate the continent from Nazi Germany’s occupation.

Germany took full part in these ceremonies; as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz once reminded US President Donald Trump, Nazi Germany’s defeat in World War II also meant freedom for the German nation.

Yet amid the celebratory mood, there was one jarring note: persistent warnings by Chinese diplomats in various European capitals that Japan – Nazi Germany’s World War II ally – has yet to atone for its own historic responsibilities and is now rearming.

Beijing’s pitch to European audiences echoes the one delivered in Asia, namely that the Japanese government of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi represents the revival of Japanese militarism, and that Europe, as co-author of the post-1945 order, must now have a stake in containing this supposed threat.

At the Munich Security Conference – Europe’s top annual military get-together, held in February in 2026 – Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi explicitly invoked Japan’s World War II record to warn that the “ghosts” of “Japanese militarism” are supposedly “haunting” the world again.

In a speech entitled “Joining Hands to Set the Ship of History on the Right Course”, Wang appealed to the Europeans to cooperate with China in combating what he called a “very dangerous development”.

Since then, a steady drumbeat of Chinese officials and state-sponsored academics have sought to amplify this message.

The 80th anniversary of the start of the Tokyo Trials of key Japanese war criminals, which marked May, provided an excuse for a barrage of Chinese commentaries claiming that Tokyo is far from contrite for its previous deeds.

Meanwhile, a number of commentaries from Chinese official media outlets such as Xinhua English or the Global Times sought to portray the “far-right” Takaichi as no different from the far-right, racist and anti-immigrant parties in Europe. China’s supposed fight against a revisionist Japan is, allegedly, also Europe’s fight.

There were times when such Chinese arguments would have found a receptive audience in Europe, particularly with the British and Dutch, who had extensive colonies in Asia, and whose citizens suffered grievously at the hands of the Japanese during World War II.

Europeans also broadly accept that, compared with the behaviour of post-war German politicians, Japanese leaders have never shown the same level of contrition, or troubled themselves unduly about compensating war victims.

As late as 1998, when then Emperor Akihito of Japan visited the United Kingdom, he was met with jeers from some onlookers and serried ranks of British war veterans who purposely turned their backs on the Japanese monarch.

But only a handful of these veterans are alive today, and European governments are now keen to forge close links with Japan.

The British government, for instance, decided to offer its own compensation payments to the survivors of Japanese prison camps, as a prelude to an industrial cooperation agreement with Tokyo, which now extends to the development of a new fighter jet between the two countries. And, as if to emphasise the rejection of historic animosities, the other partner in this fighter jet project is Italy, another ally of Nazi Germany and wartime Japan.

Policy planners in many European capitals are still trying to work out what China is hoping to achieve by reviving such old and now largely stale historic disputes.

This European discussion has assumed even greater importance after reports emerged from the latest US-China summit indicating that the only time Chinese President Xi Jinping became “vocal and agitated” in his talks with Trump – as London’s Financial Times daily put it – was when Xi mentioned Japan’s “remilitarisation”.

European analysts believe that China is using historic arguments largely to ward governments off from offering any military support to Taiwan. Seen from this perspective, much of the diplomatic noise generated by Beijing is allegedly another way of tightening Taiwan’s international isolation.

The EU has largely refrained from defence sales to Taiwan since the 1990s.

Yet in August 2025, Berlin approved the export of submarine main engines and periscopes destined for Taiwan’s Hai Kun-class indigenous submarine programme.

This followed Britain’s 2022 approval of submarine component exports to the Taiwanese. And in September 2025, the Taiwan-Poland Chamber of Commerce signed a number of agreements on drone cooperation with Taiwan’s defence industry.

More significantly, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul postponed a trip to Beijing in 2025 because of tensions raised after he criticised China’s “aggressive behaviour” in the Taiwan Strait.

Senior British and French officials who engaged in talks with the Chinese recently have confirmed that Beijing’s strategy is to combine complaints about Japan’s rearmament with allegations that Tokyo is seeking to challenge the status of Taiwan.

Beijing’s official discourse in Europe also increasingly emphasises “the outcomes of the Second World War” by presenting China as a central architect of the post-war order.

Within this narrative, Japan is cast as lacking the moral authority to revise its security policy or contest China’s strategic claims. Europeans therefore believe that much of the current Chinese diplomatic offensive is about demanding respect for China as a key global power.

Regardless of what explanation makes most sense, one conclusion is obvious: China’s efforts to raise doubts about Japan’s behaviour are disregarded in Europe.

At the annual EU-Japan summit held on July 23, 2025, the EU and Japan committed to combating “economic coercion”, code words aimed directly at China.

The 2026 summit between Tokyo and Brussels is likely to include even tougher provisions on this score. The EU’s ballooning trade deficit with China does not help either.

But China’s biggest problem is that its narrative about preserving the outcomes of World War II uses the same arguments Russia is deploying to justify its invasion of Ukraine. Just as the Chinese blame Japan for militarism, Russia blames Ukraine for supposed “Nazism”.

So, as seen from Europe, China’s arguments are not merely irrelevant or outdated; they also carry a whiff of a desire to overturn, rather than preserve, the current territorial settlement.

Either way, the Japanese emperor can expect a warm welcome when he arrives for a state visit to Europe next week.

His destination? None other than the Netherlands, one of the nations most affected by Japan’s past military adventures.