The "Ten Victories" Theory of Confronting China — Why Japanese Politicians Insist on Deleting the China-Friendly Option

In early August 2026, in a clip from one of her livestreams, Pan Nini took a question: why do Japan's governing politicians today hold their convictions with such confidence? Why, when they conduct foreign policy, must the option of being friendly toward China be the first thing deleted?

Her answer came as a slogan: opposing America brings ten defeats; opposing China brings ten victories.

One: How Being Sanctioned Becomes a Blessing in Disguise

First, consider how Sanae Takaichi handles the fact of being sanctioned.

After China's export controls on dual-use items came down, the Takaichi government did not sulk. Instead, it went on a diplomatic tour — Southeast Asia, South Korea, the United States, Australia, Europe, India, Vietnam — pitching the same line at every stop: we want to build a critical-minerals supply chain that excludes China.

Being sanctioned thus becomes a talking point: what China does to me today, it can do to you tomorrow — surely Europe should feel a sense of crisis now?

Takaichi's calculus comes in two steps. Years ago, when Abe pushed the TPP, the aim was to keep China outside the trade system — and it nearly succeeded. Now that excluding China from trade outright is out of reach, the first move is a smaller goal: build a China-excluding minerals supply chain, then gradually extend the exclusion to trade itself. As Pan Nini puts it, this is an inheritance from Abe — only with a smaller goal cashed in first.

Two: What Confronting America Cannot Do, Confronting China Can

What exactly is the "Ten Victories" theory? Pan Nini ran through it item by item, and all ten follow the same sentence pattern: if you confront America — which keeps military bases on Japanese soil — you cannot do it; if you confront China, you can —

1. Constitutional revision: hype the Chinese military threat, accelerate military development, and achieve the goal of revising the constitution.
2. New growth engines: develop a military industry and find new sources of economic growth.
3. Unity: make the public anxious, rally everyone against China, and bind the nation together more tightly.
4. Military backing: deliberately stir up incidents nearby (for instance, chanting "a contingency in Taiwan is a contingency for us" day after day) until the United States agrees to — or even helps — Japan build up its military forces, thereby strengthening Japan's bargaining chips with Washington.
5. Capital repatriation: pressure Japanese companies to cut back or terminate cooperation with China, bringing more capital home.
6. Whitewashing history: stop reflecting on war crimes — and even beautify them — strengthening the public's historical confidence and cultural confidence.
7. Diplomatic backbone: freed from reflection on war crimes, Japanese diplomacy can stand taller.
8. Encirclement network: lobby neighboring countries and countries along the Belt and Road to make them believe "the Chinese are bad," and build a containment network together.
9. International reputation: court the media, intellectuals and NGOs of Western countries to burnish Japan's international reputation.
10. Managing the Chinese in Japan: keep doing business with Chinese people while making ethnic Chinese residents, overseas Chinese and Chinese tourists in Japan feel that leaving troubled China for Japan is a favor to be grateful for — and that they should not behave like consumers with dignity.

Three: A List That Sounds Like It Solves All of Japan's Problems

The cleverness of this ledger lies entirely in its sentence pattern: each item first sets up a target of what "confronting America cannot do" (the United States has military bases in Japan), then delivers the answer of what "confronting China can do." Confronting America is dangerous and immovable; confronting China is safe, and every item points to a concrete benefit. Lined up ten by ten, the list appears to solve all of Japan's current problems.

What is more, the ledger sells on both the left and the right. Pan Nini's observation is that the standard-bearers of anti-China politics have been gaining influence across Japan's political and intellectual worlds, with both left and right carrying the same flag.

Four: In Practice, It Does Not Work

But a ledger is a ledger, and reality is reality. Pan Nini's closing line for the livestream was this: in execution, none of it works well.

Japan pitched warships (Asagiri-class frigates) to Indonesia; Indonesia did not take the bait. On the India side, Modi did not take it either. Europe did not even spare it a proper look. Takaichi's diplomatic results have been substantively zero — so the only option is to work hard on "winning studies" at home, convincing the public that the strategy is right, that it simply has not succeeded yet, and that holding firm will eventually pay off. Within Japan there are indeed clear-eyed, defeatist voices (some of the guests invited onto Fuji Television, for example), but what circulates domestically is mostly triumphalist rhetoric — treated as something to laugh at.