Taiwan premier’s rare visit to Japan to watch baseball a home run for diplomacy

TAIPEI – Taipei had a lot more to cheer about at the World Baseball Classic than the island’s crushing 14-0 win over the Czech Republic on March 7 – the game at the Tokyo Dome has been hailed as a home run for Taiwanese diplomacy.

That is because a special guest was spotted in the stands: Taiwan Premier Cho Jung-tai, making the first public visit to Japan by a sitting premier from the self-governed island since Taipei and Tokyo cut diplomatic ties in 1972.

Donning a cap with the words “Team Taiwan”, Mr Cho – flanked by Taiwan’s Sports Minister Lee Yang and its de facto ambassador to Japan, Mr Lee Yi-yang – high-fived cheering fans as he walked past them. 

Mr Cho has framed the visit, which drew Beijing’s ire, as a private trip taken at his personal expense to support the Taiwanese team, with “no other objective” or scheduled political meetings.

Analysts, however, said the visit marked a diplomatic breakthrough for Taiwan, and suggested a calculated effort by Tokyo to test the boundaries of its unofficial relationship with Taipei.

This comes as relations between Japan and China are at their lowest point in years, after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said last November that Japan’s armed forces could theoretically be deployed in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. 

Beijing, which views Taiwan as its own territory and an internal matter, was furious and has since responded with retaliatory measures such as travel warnings and export controls targeting Japan.

When asked about the visit, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun used particularly strong language⁠ to criticise Mr Cho.

“The person you mentioned harboured evil designs. Acting stealthily and sneakily, he ​ran to Japan to engage in little tricks of seeking independence and making provocations,” ​he said at a regular press briefing in Beijing on March 9. 

“Japan’s indulgence of provocation and unbridled recklessness will certainly pay a price, and all consequences arising from this must be borne by the Japanese side.”

Reflecting on the developments, Professor Wang Hung-jen, a political science analyst at Taiwan’s National Cheng Kung University, said: “Despite continued Chinese pressure and ongoing tensions between Tokyo and Beijing, Japan was still willing to facilitate Cho’s visit – this shows that the ‘China factor’ shaping Japan’s Taiwan policy may be weakening.”

He added: “Although it was not an official engagement, it was a clever cooperation between the two governments.”

Visits by senior officials from Taiwan to foreign countries are sensitive, and such trips, if any, are usually carried out discreetly and rarely disclosed. 

Assistant Professor Yu-hua Chen, an international relations expert at Akita International University in Japan, pointed to the immense challenges that the late former Taiwanese president Lee Teng-hui had faced in visiting Japan in the past, despite enjoying “enormous respect” and influence among Japanese political elites. 

In 2001, after a trip that Mr Lee made to Japan for heart surgery enraged China, Japan’s then Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka assured Beijing that Tokyo would no longer issue him any visa. This was even though Mr Lee was no longer president at the time.

But Tokyo’s unspoken rules of engagement appear to be shifting in Taiwan’s favour. 

In 2022, President Lai Ching-te, who was vice-president at the time, travelled to Tokyo as part of a “personal itinerary” to attend the funeral of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. In 2025, Taiwan Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung travelled to Japan under the official pretext of touring the Expo 2025 Osaka site, but was later revealed to have attended political meetings.

“It appears that Tokyo is seeking to demonstrate how flexible it can be under its ‘one China’ policy by gradually normalising visits by officials from Taiwan,” Prof Chen told The Straits Times. 

“Japan’s Taiwan policy may become increasingly similar to that of the US, which includes several key elements such as visits by Taiwanese officials, public statements that Taiwan’s security is an interest of the US, and visits by Congress members,” he said.

When Taiwanese officials visit the US, Washington manages sensitivities by framing their trips as private and unofficial “transits” rather than formal diplomatic visits. These “stopovers” are sometimes limited to specific locations such as Hawaii and Guam, instead of major continental cities, to keep the visits low-key.

The shifts in Japan’s Taiwan policy should be understood as part of its broader effort to strengthen deterrence against China and discourage it from taking reckless actions on the Taiwan issue, Prof Chen said. 

Back in Taiwan, not everyone was supportive of Mr Cho’s actions. 

Opposition lawmakers questioned whether the trip, which involved a security detail and chartered flights, was truly paid for out of his own pocket. Mr Lin Pei-hsiang, secretary-general of the opposition Kuomintang legislative caucus, demanded that the Premier provide receipts.

But Prof Wang, the political science analyst, said such debate distracted from the true significance of the trip.

“The opposition party should not dwell on whether the trip was self-funded, but should further observe the changes in Taiwan-Japan relations,” he said, adding that interactions between the two economies look set to grow.

 “Through sports diplomacy, Cho’s trip to Japan demonstrated a significant breakthrough.”