U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan earlier this month was deja vu for me in two ways.

First, it reminded me of her visit to Hiroshima in 2008 for the Group of Eight Speakers’ Summit. The host was the Japanese Speaker of the Lower House and former Foreign Minister Yohei Kono, who strongly wished for her attendance. Back then I was serving as the Japanese Ambassador to the United States, and the Japanese speaker, who had earlier been my boss, wanted me to convey his wish directly to his American counterpart.

Once Speaker Pelosi’s visit became public, however, criticisms appeared in the American press. The argument went: Why should the U.S. House speaker visit Hiroshima when Japanese leaders have yet to pay a visit to Pearl Harbor?

Yet she did not back off. Once she made the decision, that was it.

This was eight years before President Barack Obama’s visit to Hiroshima and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s subsequent visit to Pearl Harbor in 2016. I was impressed by the spine of this iron lady. It was in similar fashion to how she went ahead with her visit to Taiwan in spite of warnings from China.

I told her this when I met her in Tokyo earlier this month. I understand that these visits can be significant to show the solidarity of the U.S., but also that only once in a while should be sufficient.

The second deja vu was China’s strong reaction. Japan experienced a similar thing in 2012. Then Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s Cabinet, formed by the Democratic Party of Japan, purchased parts of the Senkaku Islands from a private citizen to preempt then-Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara from acquiring them. The conservative governor was weary of Beijing’s approach to these islands and decided to purchase and secure them. The islands were nearly 2,000 km away from Tokyo, but the Tokyo Metropolitan Government established a fund and solicited donations.

The government of Japan was concerned that the purchase by Gov. Ishihara, who was widely considered a right-wing politician, would lead to provocative actions such as construction of infrastructure on the islands, which might trigger a confrontation with China. So the Noda Cabinet offered a higher price than Tokyo’s fund could offer and acquired them. China’s reaction was stronger than expected.

Protests spread on the streets in China’s major cities, where some demonstrators vandalized Japanese cars and restaurants. The Chinese government drastically increased the number of ships intruding into Japan’s territorial sea and contiguous waters. Protests halted after several weeks but ship intrusions continue even to this day.

China must have known that the Noda Cabinet had no other choice but to preempt the Tokyo governor’s moves, since Japan’s central government has no legal authority to halt local governments from acquiring land.

Regarding the U.S. speaker’s visit, the Chinese government knew well that this was not President Joe Biden’s idea but the speaker’s own decision. The president even revealed that the U.S. military thought this visit then was not a good idea.

Then why such a strong reaction from Beijing? Some analysts attribute this to the political climate that coincided with the events of the time. Both the speaker’s visit and the Senkaku purchase happened on the heels of bilateral summit meetings between leaders of the respective countries. Immediately before Japan purchased the islands, then-Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda met with then-Chinese President Hu Jintao, where the latter asked the Japanese leader to refrain from purchasing the Senkakus. And days before Speaker Pelosi’s Taiwan visit, President Biden and President Xi Jinping spoke on the telephone, where the two leaders reportedly spent much of the time in a heated exchange regarding the speaker’s visit.

For another, both incidents were only weeks away from the Chinese Communist Party Congress held once every five years. Saving face is important for officials and they had to act tough in order to secure their positions. There may be some truth in this interpretation.

But is that all? In the case of Senkaku, China seized the opportunity as a pretext to increase the number of governmental vessels intruding into the area. In the case of the speaker’s visit, China may have found a convenient reason to expand their exercises in the region and cross the middle line of the Strait of Taiwan.

Let us hope that this will not continue like in the case of the Senkakus. Some experts may argue that these are strategic advances for China.

It may appear so in the short term. But in the long run, world public opinion matters. The so-called wolf warrior diplomacy proved to be counter-effective in developed countries. According to polls by Genron NPO, after several years since the Senkakus incidents, the image of Japan has improved among the Chinese people. Only about 50% of the Chinese people answered that they do not feel sympathy towards Japan in 2020. This was a big decline from the height of 90% in 2013.

The mirror image did not occur. Still around 90% of the Japanese public answered that they do not feel sympathy towards China in 2020. The Japanese people simply could not consider favorably a country that keeps intruding into its territorial and contiguous waters.

With the U.S. speaker’s visit, China launched missiles to fly over Taiwan and five of them reached Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone. The Japanese people were reminded that they have to fortify their defenses. The security of the uninhibited Senkaku Islands, especially, must be reviewed. Defense of islands against invasion not only from the sea but also from the air must be sought.

This is the year for the Japanese government to renew three basic documents regarding its national defense: National Security Strategy, National Defense Program Guidelines and Mid-Term Defense Program. In the last 30 years, China increased its defense spending by more than 40 times and now its size is more than four times that of the Japanese defense budget, which has not even increased by 20% during the same period.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has stated his determination to fundamentally reinforce Japan’s defense capabilities and secure the substantial increase of its defense budget needed to effect it.

China should recognize that its recent moves are only pushing the Japanese people’s backs to support such Japanese government positions. They know well that NATO’s solidarity today is stronger than ever and members have determined to increase defense spending after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

According to the NATO polls in June 2022, 40% of citizens of NATO member countries think their country should be increasing defense spending and only 12% think they should be spending less. Russian President Vladimir Putin did very rapidly what many U.S. presidents could not have done in many years.

President Xi last year reportedly said that China has to create an image as a trustworthy, lovable and respectable country. Touche, I thought.

That is the China we would like to see. Images follow acts. In order not to exacerbate the situation, not only China but we all should keep to the three "nos" that could govern allies’ relations or neighbors’ relations.

They are: “no surprise,” “no over-politicization” and “no taking each other for granted.”

Ichiro Fujisaki is a former Ambassador of Japan to the United States.