This. This is pretty obvious.
Japan so clearly doing this at the behest of the US.
The US would like nothing more than to have Japan, Phillipines and Taiwan fight with China
China's coastal cities can be attacked, trade would stop, China would never be able to catch up to the US in that scenario.
US using Japan and TW as proxies while sitting back never made much sense. All modern high-tech supply chains flow through east asia, so a pacific war would also wreck US industry and its economy would be equally set back. US is even more vulnerable since much of it's wealth is virtual finance instead of real industry.
