In an age of performative authoritarianism, power can be loud—or it can be real. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Indo-Pacific, where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) stages vast displays of hardware: carrier launches, missile drills, choreographed flypasts, and headlines proclaiming that this is the Chinese Century as the 20th was the American Century. Yet beneath the theater, a quieter, more enduring strategy is taking shape—one that Japan may be mastering. The world, distracted by