Wealth & Money Quote by Shigeru Yoshida

Yoshida is doing two things at once here: shrinking China’s importance to Japan’s bottom line, and expanding Japan’s freedom to maneuver. The sentence has the clipped pragmatism of a politician who learned, painfully, that economic “facts” are often weapons in policy fights. By calling China trade “important as it is,” he nods to reality, then immediately undercuts the alarmism that lets strategic anxiety masquerade as bookkeeping.

The key move is “has often been exaggerated.” That word “often” is a quiet accusation: someone - domestic rivals, bureaucratic factions, business lobbies, or nationalists - keeps inflating the China factor to justify a preferred line, whether it’s expansion, retaliation, or fear-driven deference. Yoshida’s claim isn’t just economic; it’s rhetorical triage, severing a presumed dependency before it hardens into doctrine.

“As proven by our experience of the past 6 years” is the credibility engine. He’s invoking lived evidence over ideology: Japan has already endured disruption, conflict, or curtailed access, and the economy didn’t collapse in the way the exaggerators predicted. In context, that “experience” points to a period when Japan’s China relationship was unstable or politically constrained, forcing adaptation. The subtext is blunt: Japan can survive without treating China as an economic umbilical cord, so policy should be guided by national strategy and resilience, not by a myth of indispensable trade.

It works because it sounds modest while being deeply revisionist: he redefines “importance” downward, and with it, redefines what Japan is allowed to do.