China Called Its Neighbors Militarists. Then July 7 Happened.

China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning reached for the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation on May 29 to suggest that Japan, by tripling its defense orders, was violating post-war disarmament obligations, and asked whether Japan meant to return to a militarist path. ^[1] Over the following six weeks, Beijing applied the same set of labels — militarism, "exclusive cliques," "division and confrontation," "external forces" — to every defense arrangement its neighbors signed or discussed, regardless of who was involved. On May 30, China deployed naval forces and declared Japan-Philippines maritime boundary talks illegal, asserting no country had the right to make arrangements concerning China's maritime rights without China's approval. ^[2] In late June it condemned Taiwan's ruling party for seeking secession by relying on "external forces" and building up military forces. ^[3] On June 29 it imposed export controls on 40 Japanese entities, including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries subsidiaries, framing the measures as deterring Japan's pursuit of "new militarism." ^[4] On July 2 it condemned Japan's free and open Indo-Pacific vision as "division and confrontation" after Japanese officials lobbied Australia, Vietnam, and the Philippines to support it. ^[5] On July 3 it labeled the India-Japan defense and economic pacts "exclusive cliques" and "exclusive small groupings" stoking "division and confrontation." ^[6] The vocabulary was consistent across that period, and so was what it was applied to: every bilateral or multilateral defense coordination among China's neighbors, each reframed as aggression or conspiracy. Then came July 7. On that day, China fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile, identified by the US State Department as intercontinental-range, across the Pacific. The missile flew over the exclusive economic zones of Nauru, Tuvalu, Kiribati, and the Federated States of Micronesia, with a dummy warhead landing near Tuvalu and Kiribati. ^[7] Beijing called it a routine arrangement of annual training and said its nuclear capabilities remain at the minimum level required for national security. ^[8] The test coincided with active periphery defense coordination in the same window: Australia and Fiji had signed the Ocean of Peace mutual defense treaty on July 6, and US-led RIMPAC and Valiant Shield exercises were underway. ^[8][9] The same day, China blocked rare-earth shipments — terbium, dysprosium, yttrium oxide — to Japan in retaliation for Prime Minister Takaichi's statement that a Chinese naval blockade of Taiwan would constitute a "survival-threatening situation" that could prompt Japan to exercise collective self-defense. ^[10][11] Also on July 7, China crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait with aircraft and deployed nine naval vessels around Taiwan, while its coast guard confronted Japan near the Senkaku Islands — two military fronts compressed into one day. ^[12] And while all of this unfolded, Chinese and Russian warships were already at sea. The Joint Sea-2026 exercises, launched July 5 and running through July 13, featured anti-submarine warfare and maritime strike operations followed by joint Pacific patrols — military coordination between two powers of the kind Beijing was denouncing in every other direction as "exclusive cliques." ^[13] Japan's Defense Minister Koizumi had already named the contradiction. In mid-June, he pointed out that China possesses nuclear weapons and strategic bombers while Japan has neither.

Some of you may have heard the term 'new militarism', but nothing (is) further from the truth… Think about it. There is a country that has a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons and strategic bombers. Japan has neither of such weapons. And yet Japan is labelled 'new militarism'. Isn't it strange? — Shinjirō Koizumi

The missile test fell in a week crowded with periphery coordination. On top of the Australia-Fiji pact and Albanese's immediate travel to the Solomon Islands to negotiate a security treaty, the US, Japan, and South Korea signed a trilateral small modular reactor cooperation pact on the sidelines of the NATO Summit on July 7. ^[9][14] Albanese called the missile test provocative and Foreign Minister Penny Wong called it destabilising. ^[9] None of this amounts to a coordinated siege. Southeast Asian economies remain deeply tied to China: Indonesia recorded its first trade deficit in six years in May 2026, and the Philippines' trade deficit widened by 50.5 percent, both driven by imports of semiconductors and capital goods. ^[15] The day before the missile test, Trump announced Xi Jinping would visit the United States on September 24. ^[16] What the evidence shows is hedging, not besieging — states maintaining economic ties to China while independently deciding that defense cooperation is prudent. India's Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh rejected Beijing's framing directly, saying India sought inclusive partnerships, not exclusive blocs. ^[17] The BrahMos coastal missile export arc is sequential and widening: the Philippines in 2022, Vietnam announced May 30, 2026, and Indonesia finalized July 4 — a deterrence network being built across the South China Sea perimeter with India as connective tissue, and India-Malaysia defense talks broadening the pattern further in the same week. ^[17][18][19] Solomon Islands Prime Minister Matthew Wale linked the missile test directly to regional coalition-building. ^[9]

In many ways the missile test is further evidence for the need for a regional platform so that the region can speak as one. — Matthew Wale