Okinawa Is in the Crosshairs of China’s Ambitions

On Dec. 16, 2022, China extended its threats against Taiwan to include a more direct move against Japan—and its treaty ally, the United States. The Liaoning aircraft carrier sailed quietly east between Okinawa and Miyako islands, of Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture, sandwiching the Japanese territory with China’s mainland to the west.

Between Dec. 17 and 22, the Chinese navy flew a total of 180 fighter jets and helicopters from the carrier in an apparent drill against the Nansei island chain, also known as the Ryukyu Islands, which includes Okinawa, where the United States has several military bases. This elevated threat threshold, along with the increasing assertiveness of other Chinese actions such as the spy balloon incident, brings new dynamics and risks to Okinawa itself.

China has conducted drills on the eastern side of the island of Taiwan before, wading into Japanese territorial waters, but historically it stayed closer to Taiwan. This time, China’s navy sailed deliberately between two islands deep in Japanese territory, in what looked like training to deal with the larger U.S.-Japan defensive stronghold. Speeches, jamming or interfering with information channels, nearby missile tests, and buzzing jets over Taiwan have become expected forms of pressure from China. But steering an aircraft carrier east of the Nansei islands, past waters Japan designates for the U.S. military, was a far stronger move.

These drills occurred near waters and airspace the United States uses for training, an area Japan and the United States consider the more secure side of Okinawa. To some degree, such moves by China is a regular reaction to events around Taiwan, where China frequently saber-rattles in response to the island’s defense efforts. The United States and Japan had just signed large defense spending bills to assist Taiwan. But Okinawa also has a significance of its own.

Okinawa has a tragic history of recent conflict. The independent Ryukyu Kingdom was taken over by Japan in the 19th century, but the worst losses came during World War II, when the island lost around a quarter of its civilian population during fighting between the Americans and Japanese, including mass suicides ordered by the Japanese military. The island offered a foothold for the invasion of the home islands itself—one never, in the end, needed. Following the war, Japan signed a security treaty with the United States giving up its military capacity and entrusting it to the United States, which directly ruled the island for a period. Okinawa became the hub of the U.S. military presence, forcing Okinawans to give up valuable farmland and beginning long-lasting problems between locals and the U.S. military.

At the time, China benefited from U.S. containment of the defeated Japan. Yet today the situation has flipped. The United States and Japan have grown closer, and the U.S. military presence bolder; China, acutely aware of the U.S. presence in its region, feels bullied and contained. The United States routinely sails its own 7th Fleet into the Taiwan Strait, flaunting its ability to respond quickly. Sailing the Liaoning carrier past Okinawa was the Chinese attempt to respond to the U.S. military with an equivalent gesture. It may have prompted U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s rethink of his visit to Taiwan; McCarthy requested instead that Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen meet him in the United States.

But China isn’t just eyeing Taiwan. As China’s fleet strength grows and the possibility of a conflict with the United States rises, Beijing increasingly needs a path through the first island chain as a whole. The first island chain is the string of islands, small and large, including Taiwan and the Ryukyu Islands, between China and the Pacific Ocean. The islands’ territorial claims potentially limit China’s access to open seas in the event of war.

Retired U.S. Admiral James Stavridis contends in his book Sea Power that access to the oceans “drive[s] the international system” because of a ship’s ability to carry large scale weaponry, aircraft, and supplies anywhere in the world. The smaller Nansei islands potentially hold an exit lane for Beijing. China already claims the Diaoyu islands (as it refers to them; Japan calls them the Senkaku islands) just west of the Nansei islands but harbors greater ambitions.

War with Taiwan is one thing, though; war with Japan and the United States another. Part of Beijing’s purpose here may be intimidation, hoping to keep Tokyo and Washington out of a war in the first place. But it’s more likely to stir opposition to Beijing in Tokyo, where distrust of China is growing. This is the kind of moment Tokyo envisioned when signing the original U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty in 1951 and establishing permanent basing agreements with the United States in 1960. The U.S.-Japan alliance, born out of the U.S. occupation, has not always been popular with the Japanese public, but Beijing’s direct military threat makes the joint Japanese-American defense approach for all these decades more credible.

All this makes Okinawa increasingly important—and imposes costs that Okinawans, now largely opposed to Washington’s presence and feeling neglected by Tokyo, don’t want to pay. At the crux of this tangle is Okinawa Prefecture Governor Denny Tamaki, the son of a Japanese mother and a U.S. marine father he never knew, who has sought to stand up for the people of Okinawa against pressure from both Japan and the United States. Tamaki’s experiences embody the human consequences of focusing so much geopolitical energy on one island chain. Okinawans are angry about the constant low-flying aircraft noise; the crimes, both petty and brutal, committed by American soldiers and sailors; and the extensive land reserved for military bases.

Yet given the strategic value of Okinawa, the island may be doomed to be contested by larger powers. Chinese revanchists often point to the island as a potential claim for Beijing itself, based on the tributary relationship between the Ryukyu Kingdom and the Qing empire. Beijing has made use of these claims itself during disputes with Tokyo over other island territories.

Yet China’s ambitions could also backfire. The U.S. presence in Okinawa brings hundreds of thousands of Americans through the island. Over eight decades, some have grown fond of Okinawa and Japan more generally—a powerful instrument of soft power for the archipelago. Any threat to the island is likely not to deter Washington or Tokyo but to provoke them.