Karishma Vaswani, Columnist

Everyone in Asia Wants a Stronger Japan. Except China

February 10, 2026 at 2:07 AM UTC

Karishma Vaswani is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia politics with a special focus on China. Previously, she was the BBC's lead Asia presenter and worked for the BBC across Asia and South Asia for two decades.

In from the cold.
Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images

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Across Asia, the reaction to Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s election triumph has been near unanimous: A stronger Japan is good for the region. Everyone, that is, except China.

Japan’s first-ever female premier secured a historic victory, handing her the strongest mandate of any leader in the country’s postwar era. The scale of this win matters far beyond Japan. Under Takaichi, Tokyo is increasingly viewed as a stabilizing force in the Indo-Pacific — a stunning reversal for a country that once made Asia deeply wary of any resurgence in its military power. That shift is not happening because the region has forgotten the past. Rather, it’s pragmatically trying to manage the present.