China on Friday took its feud with Tokyo over Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Taikachi\u2019s recent comments on Taiwan to the United Nations, as tensions between the East Asian neighbours deepened and ties plunged to their lowest since 2023.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Japan dares to attempt an armed intervention in the cross-Strait situation, it would be an act of aggression,\u201d China\u2019s permanent representative to the UN, Fu Cong, wrote in a letter on Friday to the global body\u2019s Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, referring to the strait that separates mainland China from self-governing Taiwan, which Beijing insists belongs to China. Beijing has not ruled out the possibility of forcibly taking Taiwan.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n The diplomatic spat began earlier in November when Taikachi, who took office only in October, made remarks about how Japan would respond to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. Those remarks angered Beijing, which has demanded retractions, although the Japanese PM has not made one.<\/p>\n However, the spat has now rapidly escalated into a trade war involving businesses on both sides, and has deepened security tensions over a contested territory that has long been a flashpoint for the two countries.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what we know about the dispute:<\/p>\n While speaking to parliament on November 7, Taikachi, a longtime Taiwan supporter, said a Chinese naval blockade or other action against Taiwan could prompt a Japanese military response. The response was not typical, and Taikachi appeared to go several steps further than her predecessors, who had only in the past expressed concern about the Chinese threat to Taiwan, but had never mentioned a response.<\/p>\n \u201cIf it involves the use of warships and military actions, it could by all means become a survival-threatening situation,\u201d Taikachi told parliament, responding to an opposition politician\u2019s queries in her first parliamentary grilling.<\/p>\n That statement immediately raised protests from China\u2019s foreign and defence ministries, which demanded retractions. China\u2019s consul general in Osaka, Xue Jian, a day after, criticised the comments and appeared to make threats in a now deleted post on X, saying: \u201cWe have no choice but to cut off that dirty neck that has been lunged at us without hesitation. Are you ready?\u201d<\/p>\n That post by Xue also raised anger in Japan, and some officials began calling for the diplomat\u2019s expulsion. Japan\u2019s Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara protested to Beijing over Xue\u2019s X message, saying it was \u201cextremely inappropriate,\u201d while urging China to explain. Japan\u2019s Foreign Ministry also demanded the post be deleted. Chinese officials, meanwhile, defended the comments as coming from a personal standpoint.<\/p>\n On November 14, China\u2019s Foreign Ministry summoned the Japanese ambassador and warned of a \u201ccrushing defeat\u201d if Japan interfered with Taiwan. The following day, Japan\u2019s Foreign Ministry also summoned the Chinese ambassador to complain about the consul\u2019s post.<\/p>\n Although Taikachi told parliament three days after her controversial statement that she would avoid talking about specific scenarios going forward, she has refused to retract her comments.<\/p>\n The matter has deteriorated into a trade war of sorts. On November 14, China issued a no-travel advisory for Japan, an apparent attempt to target the country\u2019s tourism sector, which welcomed some 7.5 million Chinese tourists between January and September this year. On November 15, three Chinese airlines offered refunds or free changes for flights planned on Japan-bound routes.<\/p>\n The Chinese Education Ministry also took aim at Japan\u2019s education sector, warning Chinese students there or those planning to study in Japan about recent crimes against Chinese. Both China and Japan have recorded attacks against each other\u2019s nationals in recent months that have prompted fears of xenophobia, but it is unclear if the attacks are linked.<\/p>\n Tensions are also rising around territorial disputes. Last Sunday, the Chinese coastguard announced it was patrolling areas in the East China Sea, in the waters around a group of uninhabited islands that both countries claim. Japan calls the islands the Senkaku Islands, while Beijing calls them the Diaoyu Islands. Japan, in response, condemned the brief \u201cviolation\u201d of Japanese territorial waters by a fleet of four Chinese coastguard ships.<\/p>\n Over the last week, Chinese authorities have suspended the screening of at least two Japanese films and banned Japanese seafood.<\/p>\n Then, on Thursday, China postponed a three-way meeting with culture ministers from Japan and South Korea that was scheduled to be held in late November.<\/p>\n On November 18, diplomats from both sides met in Beijing for talks where the grievances were aired.<\/p>\n Senior Chinese official Liu Jinsong chose to wear a five-buttoned collarless suit associated with the rebellion of Chinese students against Japanese imperialism in 1919.<\/p>\n Japanese media have called the choice of the suit a \u201csymbol of defiance.\u201d They also point to videos and images from the meeting showing Liu with his hands in his pockets after the talks, saying the gesture is typically viewed as disrespectful in formal settings.<\/p>\n The Beijing meeting did not appear to ease the tensions, and there seems to be no sign of the impasse breaking: Chinese representatives asked for a retraction, but Japanese diplomats said Taikachi\u2019s remarks were in line with Japan\u2019s stance.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a long and \u2013 especially for China \u2013 painful story. Imperial Japan occupied significant portions of China after the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), when it gained control of Taiwan and forcefully annexed Korea. In 1937, Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Amid strong Chinese resistance, Japan occupied parts of eastern and southern China, where it created and controlled puppet governments. The Japanese Empire\u2019s defeat in World War II in 1945 ended its expansion bid.<\/p>\n The Chinese Communist Party emerged victorious in 1949 in the civil war that followed with the Kuomintang, which, along with the leader Chiang Kai-shek, fled to Taiwan to set up a parallel government. But until 1972, Japan formally recognised Taiwan as \u201cChina\u201d.<\/p>\n In 1972, it finally recognised the People\u2019s Republic of China and agreed to the \u201cone China principle\u201d, in effect severing formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan. However, Japan has maintained firm unofficial ties with Taiwan, including through trade.<\/p>\n Japan has also maintained a policy of so-called \u201cstrategic ambiguity\u201d over how Tokyo would respond if China were to attack Taiwan \u2014 a policy of deliberate ambivalence, aimed at leaving Beijing and the rest of the world guessing over whether it would intervene militarily. The stance is similar to that of the United States, Taiwan\u2019s most powerful ally.<\/p>\n He Yongqian, a spokesperson for China\u2019s commerce ministry, said at a regular news conference this week that trade relations between the two countries had been \u201cseverely damaged\u201d by PM Takaichi\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n China is Japan\u2019s second-largest export market after the US, with Tokyo selling mainly industrial equipment, semiconductors and automobiles to Beijing. In 2024, China bought about $125bn worth of Japanese goods, according to the United Nations\u2019 Comtrade database. South Korea, Japan\u2019s third-largest export market, bought goods worth $46bn in 2024.<\/p>\n China is also a major buyer of Japan\u2019s sea cucumbers and its top scallop buyer. Japanese firms, particularly seafood exporters, are worried about the effects of the spat on their businesses, according to reporting by Reuters.<\/p>\n Beijing is not as reliant on Japan\u2019s economy, but Tokyo is China\u2019s third-largest trading partner. China mainly exports electrical equipment, machinery, apparel and vehicles to Japan. Tokyo bought $152bn worth of goods from China in 2024, according to financial data website Trading Economics.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not the first time Beijing has retaliated with trade. In 2023, China imposed a ban on all Japanese food imports after Tokyo released radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific. Beijing was against the move, although the UN atomic energy agency had deemed the discharge safe. That ban was lifted just on November 7, the same day Taikachi made the controversial comments.<\/p>\n In 2010, China also halted the exports of rare earth minerals to Japan for seven weeks after a Chinese fishing captain was detained near the disputed Senkaku\/Diaoyu islands.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n China on Friday took its feud with Tokyo over Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Taikachi\u2019s recent comments on Taiwan to the United Nations, as tensions between the East Asian neighbours deepened and ties plunged to their lowest since 2023. \u201cIf Japan dares to attempt an armed intervention in the cross-Strait situation, it would be an act […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2235,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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What did Japan\u2019s PM say about Taiwan?<\/h2>\n
How have tensions increased since?<\/h2>\n
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\u2018Symbol of defiance\u2019<\/h2>\n
What is the history of Sino-Japanese tensions?<\/h2>\n
How important is trade between China and Japan?<\/h2>\n
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