The Duran Podcast - Xi warns Japan PM Takaichi and Trump to back off

Episode Date: November 28, 2025

Xi warns Japan PM Takaichi and Trump to back off

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the situation that is developing between Japan and China and Xi Jinping's call to Trump, which was a very significant, significant development. Xi Jinping actually calling the U.S. president. It looks like Trump, at least at first, did not understand the significance of Xi Jinping actually reaching out to him, calling him. But it seems like now there is an understanding of the significance of this phone call. And Japan and China over Taiwan, that's an interesting development. What are your thoughts?

Well, it is. I mean, what is happening is that Japan has had one of its regular changes of prime minister. And the new prime minister, who is a woman, is somebody who, who is very much on the nationalist wing of Japanese politics. And in Japan, when one talks about a nationalist wing of politics, that often translates into an anti-China or hostile to China or suspicious of China position. And she has made certain comments about Japan defending Taiwan

and supporting Taiwan in its cause of, of protecting itself from reconquest by mainland China. Now, for the Chinese, this is absolutely unacceptable language. As far as their concern, Taiwan is part of their country. There is no such conception of Taiwan as an independent state. The reason Taiwan initially was separated from the Chinese motherland, as they would say, in the first place, was because in the 19th century, as a result of a war between China and Japan, Japan conquered it. And here is the Prime Minister of Japan, a country which waged a massively aggressive series of wars against China,

in the 1890s, but then again mostly in the 1930s and the 1940s, wars that caused enormous devastation in China and which have never been forgotten in China and which the Communist Party of China conceives of itself as having led China's resistance to the Japanese. Obviously this is disputed. But anyway, here we have Japan, the Japanese, talking in this way, and this has triggered an extremely strong reaction from China. And as I understand it, and I've been talking to people from China itself, they say that there's the mood there is of people actually being ready and talking about a war between China and Japan over Taiwan. So, Xi Jinping, who is obviously himself in sense by this, but quite

possibly under pressure too, because remember, this is, feelings in China about this are very, very strong. What he tries to do, what he's done is he's called Trump, and this is unprecedented. it. Apparently, the only other time when a Chinese leader took the initiative of calling the White House was after 9-11. So this time, Xi Jinping, but the first time ever has initiated a call with the US president. And if you go to the Chinese readout, it's quite clear what he's talking about. He's talking about Japan. He's talking about Taiwan. He says that the United States and China fought together against Japan in the Second World War. He's reminding Trump of all of that history and of Japanese militarism and Japanese aggressiveness.

And he's basically calling on Trump to bring Japan to heal. And Trump's initial comments about this call on truth social show that it went completely over his head. And he didn't really understand the purpose of Sishing Things call at all. So what happens now going forward? Brian Berletic actually did a video on this situation between Japan and China. And I think Brian makes a correct point, a correct assessment in his analysis, which is that Japan would never be doing any of this without some approval in the United States. United States, very high up, very significant approval from the United States. So if you assume that

the United States is behind pushing Japan towards some sort of aggressive posture or saber-rattling against China, what message does Trump take from this, given that Xi Jinping is basically telling him bring Japan to heal? I mean, where do we go from here? Are we going to see a repeat of of Project Ukraine or will some more sensible, pragmatic, rational people in D.C. say, you know what? We decided to test China. Maybe that was the purpose of this. I don't know, maybe there's something more to it, but whatever. We decided to do this. Obviously, China's not going to have any of it. we couldn't get the better of China in a trade war. That ended very quickly with China basically saying, no rare earths, and do we have to back off from that? Let's not push it militarily,

at least for the moment. What do you think this is going to lead to? Yes, the first thing to say is that I completely agree with Brian. It is inconceivable to me that any Japanese government, even a very nationalist Japanese government, would involve itself in the Taiwan issue unless it was confident that it had the support of the United States. In fact, I would go further than this. There's been lots of discussion about Taiwan in the American military media, but also the NIACON media. And what the United States has in fact been trying to do, at least when I said the United States, the military people and the foreign policy people who have the objective of trying to contain China

and who have been quietly leveraging the situation in Taiwan to try to move Taiwan gradually slowly towards some kind of independence from China because they see Taiwan first and foremost. And I think I want to say this as a major naval base and position that the United States needs to retain if it is to retain control of the Pacific. This goes all the way back, by the way, to the 1950s. Douglas MacArthur, you know, the famous American general, wrote back, wrote a memo all the way back in, I think, 1950, in which he spoke about Taiwan as being the key to American control of the Pacific. if the United States were supposedly to lose Taiwan,

it's an extraordinary thing to say, by the way, losing Taiwan. But if they were to lose Taiwan, or if Taiwan were to fall under, using MacArthur's words, communist control, that would open the way for the Chinese, the Chinese, who have an increasingly powerful navy to contest the Pacific, controlled of the Pacific, against the U.S. fleet. So there's been a lot of this discussion going on,

and the U.S. has been saying to itself, well, you know, we're being outproduced by China in naval construction. The Chinese have just unrolled their first supercarrier, and they've got two other smaller carriers, and they're building up their Navy very, very fast. So what we need to do is not just contest China with our own Navy where the odds are starting to ship, the balance is starting to ship in China's favor. But we've got to involve our allies as well.

And that means the Philippines and South Korea. But South Korea can't be completely relied upon because it's got its own prickly relationship with China. and anyway, it sometimes gives impressions of wanting to go its own way. And the Philippines is not a powerful industrial country. The powerful industrial country in this area, which is our ally, is Japan. And there's been a lot of talk for quite a long time about enlisting Japan's help. And Japan has a significant Navy to try to defend. Taiwan alongside the United States.

So I think this is where this comes from, actually. I do think this has come out of the blue. And I think this is one of the reasons also why the Chinese have reacted so strongly, because Japan is a significant industrial and military power in East Asia. And it is also, by the way, a country which could quite quickly acquire nuclear. weapons, should he choose to do so. So this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is a a very dangerous situation, which could very easily escalate in ways that

that would be dangerous for the United States and for him. Because if the Chinese get the sense that the Japanese and the Americans are now ganging up against them over an issue like Taiwan, which is a very red button issue in China, then the Chinese will start to take countermeasures. And they will start to take countermeasures that will extend beyond the the very significant military buildup that is going on in China at the moment. It could very easily lead, for example, to the Chinese again restricting exports or further restricting exports of rare earths, stopping exports of rare earths to the United States

in order to upset the American military buildup. They would say this is nothing to do with economics anymore. It's nothing to do with trade. It's about Taiwan. It's about military affairs. So we can't, we can't arm our own military enemy. So we could see all of that restart and very quickly, by the way. And we could see the Chinese starting to take other measures as well, you know, stopping

supplies of important materials to the United States and perhaps also the Chinese taking further steps to strengthen their relations with their allies. Now, the key ally, of course, here is Russia. The Chinese might say to themselves, if the Americans are coming after us over Taiwan and are enlisting the Japanese, then we need the Russians fully on side with us. That means we've got to end the war in Ukraine fast. How do we end the war in Ukraine fast? We start doing what we have up to now not done, which is we start sending weapons directly to the Russians. And our massive industrial and manufacturing economy can provide Russia not with 4 million shells or 5 million shells.

It could quite easily provide Russia with 100,000, 100 million shells. which is what the Soviet Union produced every year during the Second World War. So you can see how this could play out if it isn't handled well. So what Xi Jinping was trying to get Trump to understand is that this is a very dangerous situation. And it's one that could easily turn out very wrong because for China, as Xi Jinping has repeatedly said, Taiwan is a red line that China will not never back away from.

If Xi Jinping were to back away from Taiwan, you know, the issue of Taiwan's reunification with China, he would cease to be Chinese leader very fast. Yeah, I think Xi Jinping, has finally realized that they have no reverse gear. Right to the United States, no matter what deals do you come up with trade or negotiations, the pressure is never going to stop. It's never going to end.

The desire to bring China to heal, the U.S. unipolar, hegemon desire to bring China to heal is never going to go away. And I think from the U.S. side of things, they realize that time's running out for them. I think the trade negotiations were a big wake-up call for all of the neocons and then the deep staters who were talking about how they have all the leverage on China and China's an insignificant power compared to us, like the scott best of the Trump administration. You know, we have all the leverage. We're going to handle China. No problem. We're the hegemon. They're weaker than us. And then you get into the trade talks and China's like, okay, no rare earths. Now is it?

Game over, right? So I think that was a wake-up call to all of these guys to say, you know what, we need to get this whole military encircling China, Taiwan thing. We have to get this moving quickly because time is running out. China is getting stronger and stronger, if not already economically stronger. They're also getting militarily stronger. And we have to deal with Ukraine. You have to figure out what we're bogged down in Ukraine. What do we do there? So I think this is what's driving a lot of this. But no doubt, to me, Xi Jinping has finally realized, if you didn't know this already, that the U.S. they have no reverse gear.

The neocons have no freaking reverse gear on any of this stuff. And he's never going to get them to back down, to be quite honest. Yes, you're completely right about the neocons. And by the way, just to emphasize the point, underline the point you've just made. A couple of weeks ago, a report appeared that was published by Rand, a Rand report, which actually suggested a change of policy towards China, seeking some kind of rapproch more and understanding with China. And a lot of people became very excited about this, including, by the way, in China,

and said that the American ship is changing direction. and this is a sign that the neocons are losing this argument. What then happened about a week ago was that Rand suddenly deleted that article. So it was a sign that that report obviously raised hackles with a lot of people. There were clearly complaints about this. And the report was deleted, which again tells you who, is in the ascendant here. It's exactly the people you said, the people who have no reverse gear. Now, the Chinese, by the way, have struggled to understand this. I can remember long ago,

not so long ago, actually, a few years ago. Back in 2014, to be precise, I remember being told by somebody from China, you know, that we in China, we understand the Americans very well. We managed to get on with them. We have no problems with them. Our trade is doing so, so well, why can't the Russians do as we do? What is it with these Russians that they end up all the time getting themselves into conflicts with the Americans? And I tried to point out that actually, you know, the Americans are not quite as easy to handle as you appear to think. And I can remember this person didn't quite understand me. And that was a very, very strong and persistent view.

in Beijing, in China for a very long time. And it's only, I think, in the last three or four years, that the Chinese leadership has begun to understand that, in fact, things are not as easy with the United States as that they'd imagine. The Russians had problems with the Americans. It was not just because the Russians were clumsy and bungling and incompetent, because everybody in the end has trouble with the Americans.

And it's taken a long time for the Chinese to come to this point. But I think you're right. I think they now have. All right. We will end the video there, the durand.locos.com. We are on X and Telegram and Rumble. We are also on substack. So check out our substack page, our substack community.

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