Japan’s Two-Track China Strategy Is a Model for US Allies

Japan’s simultaneous pursuit of hard Taiwan deterrence and quiet parliamentary diplomacy with Beijing is not policy confusion — it is a deliberate, low-cost dual-track model, and it is already the template South Korea, Australia and the Philippines are using, ad hoc, to manage China without ceding control of that relationship to an unpredictable Washington. On August 28, senior Chinese Communist Party officials sat across from a delegation of Japanese lawmakers in Beijing and delivered one line that mattered more than anything the visitors offered: Taiwan, they said, is “at the heart” of the tensions between the two countries. It was…