It can be said that, through Chiang Kai-shek's thought, Japan's civilizational core has been absorbed, and that while the system called Japan remains in place as an outer shell, the contents of its politics and economy have been turned into those of the Republic of China.
Looking at this from the standpoint of corporate acquisitions, as of July 2026 the major Japanese firms that have come under the control of Taiwanese companies extend, beyond Sharp, into semiconductors, electronic components, automotive equipment, and batteries.
The largest case is Pioneer. On December 1, 2025, CarUX, a company under Taiwan's Innolux, acquired all of its shares, and Pioneer formally entered the Innolux group. The acquisition price was approximately 163.6 billion yen.
Sharp is under the umbrella of the Hon Hai Precision Industry (Foxconn) group of Taiwan. As of the end of March 2026, Hon Hai Precision holds 22.32 percent, Foxconn Far East 11.81 percent, and Foxconn Technology 9.96 percent; taken together, the Hon Hai-affiliated companies retain a controlling block of shares. Dynabook, which Sharp owns 100 percent, is likewise indirectly under the Hon Hai group.
Shibaura Electronics is a firm of world-leading rank in thermistors for temperature sensors. Taiwan's Yageo succeeded in a hostile takeover in 2025, acquiring 87.3 percent of the shares tendered. Procedures toward making it a wholly owned subsidiary are being carried forward, and the Japanese government has also approved the deal, with conditions attached to prevent technology outflow.
FDK was a Fujitsu-affiliated battery and electronic components company, but its largest shareholder is now Taiwan's SILITECH TECHNOLOGY, which holds 45.00 percent. Fujitsu's holding has fallen to 17.60 percent, and the company stands under the effective control of Taiwan's PSA group. It is a company that possesses nickel-metal hydride batteries, lithium primary batteries, all-solid-state batteries, and rare-earth alloys.
Linkstec is a company whose origins lie in the printed circuit board business of the former Hitachi Chemical and Showa Denko Materials. On April 8, 2025, Taiwan's Global Brands Manufacture (GBM) acquired all of its shares. It possesses high-performance printed circuit boards and substrates for semiconductor inspection.
United Semiconductor Japan (USJC) is the former Mie Fujitsu Semiconductor. In 2019 it came fully under Taiwan's UMC. It has one of Japan's largest 300-millimeter semiconductor plants in Kuwana City, Mie Prefecture, and it also produces automotive power semiconductors for Denso.
GlobalWafers Japan is a Japanese silicon wafer company carrying the lineage of Toshiba Ceramics, Covalent Materials, and Covalent Silicon. It now belongs to Taiwan's GlobalWafers group, with production sites in Niigata, Yamagata, Yamaguchi, and Tochigi, and 1,653 employees including affiliated companies.
Kamaya Electric is a resistor manufacturer founded in 1957. In 2006, Taiwan's Walsin Technology acquired 85.84 percent of it from Mitsubishi Materials, and it remains within the Walsin group today.
Advantech Technologies Japan is the former Omron Nogata. Taiwan's Advantech acquired 80 percent in 2019 and subsequently brought it under its umbrella through a contract to acquire the remaining shares. It is a manufacturing base for industrial computers inside Japan.
Viewed as a whole, Taiwanese capital has taken hold, consistently, not only of Japan's finished-product brands but of the intermediate goods and core components of manufacturing: silicon wafers, semiconductor fabrication, printed circuit boards, thermistors, resistors, batteries, and automotive audio. With the 2025 acquisitions of Pioneer, Shibaura Electronics, FDK, and Linkstec in particular, incorporation into Taiwanese corporate groups has accelerated a further step.
The point to be noted here is that, even down to the present, Chiang Kai-shek's anti-Japanese stance has not been retracted; it retains the authority of the victor in the War of Resistance against Japan, and it subordinates the military and industrial capacity of defeated Japan to the control of the Republic of China. "Repaying enmity with virtue" does not signify mercy alone: it operates as political capital that makes the Japanese side feel an obligation to repay.
If Sasakawa at the time was thinking of "using Taiwan as a foothold to recover Japan's former territorial domain," might it not be that Chiang Kai-shek's side considered this something it could use for "converting the Japanese right's desire for territorial recovery into a counteroffensive against the mainland and into an anti-communist order led by the Republic of China"? Both sides wished to make use of the other, but in the hierarchy of visions Chiang Kai-shek's side stood in the higher position. Sasakawa's field of vision was the recovery of Japan's territorial domain; Chiang Kai-shek's field of vision was a vision of Far Eastern reorganization led by the Republic of China, one that included Japan's capabilities.
The record of the 1971 Zhou Enlai–Kissinger talks preserves a concrete record of the personal networks that indicate this danger. Kishi Nobusuke took part in the meetings of the Taiwan–Japan–Korea Cooperation Committee, and on the Taiwanese side Chang Chun, Huang Chieh, and Ku Cheng-kang were active. Chang Chun and Ku Cheng-kang visited Japan and conferred with the Japanese side on conceptions concerning Taiwan's United Nations question. Zhou Enlai was wary that this group's activity was a move to turn Taiwan into a subordinate region of Japan, while Kissinger, clearly rejecting a Japanese advance into Taiwan, replied that Japan's political and economic advance was difficult to measure.
The record of the U.S. Department of State on the 1971 talks shows that the Japanese side's conception of using Taiwan and the Taiwanese side's conception of using Japan intersected upon the same system. The end point of the Republic of China's vision during Chiang Kai-shek's lifetime was the counteroffensive against the mainland: a conception in which Taiwan would serve as the military command base and Japan as the industrial hinterland, the Chinese mainland would be recovered, and the Republic of China would return to the center of the Far Eastern order. With the loss of the United Nations seat in 1971 and the failure of the mainland counteroffensive, the route of territorial realization was lost.
The politics, personal networks, capital, and industrial systems that remained between Japan and Taiwan after that lost ground were transformed, by way of corporate acquisitions and supply networks, into the functional annexation of Japan. Through the inheritance of that thought, it is a system that makes Taiwan the center of command, capital, and technological integration and takes Japan in as production equipment, market, and technological assets; at present, Taiwan's Yageo has acquired Shibaura Electronics and has moved toward taking it private. (Reuters) Hon Hai and Mitsubishi Electric are studying the joint operation of Mitsubishi Electric Mobility, and Hon Hai has officially presented a plan to acquire 50 percent.
Mitsubishi Motors, too, has entered the stage of entrusting EV development and production to Hon Hai-affiliated companies. Sensors, automotive equipment, EV design and production, and semiconductors — Japan's industrial base points are being acquired by Taiwanese companies one after another.
From these facts, the "Taiwanese plan for the annexation of Japan" is constituted as something more serious than a military annexation that changes national flags and territorial lines. It is a functional annexation that leaves Japanese company names, the government, the yen, the Emperor, and the Diet in place, while transferring industrial decision-making, technological integration, capital allocation, supply networks, and external security to the Taiwanese side.
Its prototype lies in the point that Chiang Kai-shek, retaining the legitimacy of anti-Japanism, made use of the Japanese right's sense of obligation, its desire for territorial recovery, and its anti-communist consciousness, and incorporated Japan's capabilities into the Far Eastern order of the Republic of China. Sasakawa sought to restore Japan by using Chiang Kai-shek; Chiang Kai-shek used Sasakawa to create a route for acquiring Japan from within. It can be said that this mutual use is what has since, down to the present day, allowed Taiwan to grow by using the theory of the globalist side.
* Japanese political scientist
