When it deemed remarks on Taiwan by Japan’s new prime minister as provocative, China did not just issue a diplomatic rebuke to Tokyo; it deployed an economic arsenal, and what began as a bilateral spat has since spiralled into a full-blown crisis.
China last week warned its citizens to avoid travel to Japan, with major Chinese airlines offering full refunds for flights there. On Wednesday, Beijing said it would suspend Japanese seafood imports.
It is not the first time China has wielded its trade and tourism clout as a retaliatory tool to counter security risks, sovereignty threats or to pressure other countries. But observers have cautioned that the risky tactics could provoke international backlash.
The Chinese strategy could affect how regional countries view Beijing, potentially undermining its efforts to position itself as a responsible global power and instead be seen as destabilising the region.
The row between Beijing and Tokyo began earlier this month when Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested that her country could deploy its military forces in the event of a conflict in the Taiwan Strait – the first time a sitting prime minister has made such remarks, and a departure from Japan’s long-held strategic ambiguity.
She later clarified that her comments were only “hypothetical”, but refused to retract them.
China condemned the remarks, saying they constituted a “gross interference in China’s internal affairs and [violated] the one-China principle”, urging Japan to “stop making provocations and crossing the line and stop going further down the wrong path”.
Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including the United States, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the self-governed island by force and is committed to supplying it with weapons.
Beijing doubled down on its position last week by issuing a statement urging Chinese tourists to avoid travelling to Japan “in the near term” – on safety grounds – citing a series of targeted attacks this year. China is one of the biggest sources of foreign tourists to Japan.
Following that advisory, major Chinese airlines including Air China, China Southern and China Eastern offered full refunds or itinerary changes for flights, with reports suggesting that close to 500,000 ticket cancellations were issued.
On Tuesday, Mao Ning, a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, said Takaichi’s remarks had caused “fundamental damage to the political foundation of China-Japan relations”, and called for Tokyo to retract its comments as well as “repent and change course”.
The next day, Japanese media reported that Beijing had informed Tokyo it would suspend imports of Japanese seafood.
Observers are familiar with China’s playbook of deploying economic tools as diplomatic weapons. “They have done so before with regard to the Philippines and South Korea when ties went south,” said Dylan Loh, an associate professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.
“I am not surprised and I think as a major power, it is one tool within their suite of tools that they can use. Big powers are going to use whatever levels they have to advance their interests.”
China issued a similar travel advisory for the Philippines in 2014 – citing a “worsened security situation in the Philippines” – amid heightened tensions between the two countries in the South China Sea. The result was a steep drop in Chinese tourists.
In 2017, China reportedly banned travel agencies from selling tour packages to South Korea as Beijing protested against the US deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence system in the country to protect against the growing missile threat from Pyongyang.
A ban on South Korean content, including television shows and entertainment exports, was also imposed by Beijing. While never officially confirmed, the ban remains in place.
Loh said China’s travel advisories had been especially effective, quickly throttling tourism in countries whose economies relied heavily on the industry.
“However, such moves can also get countries to rethink their various dependencies on China and diversify their tourism, which is not a bad thing in itself,” he said. “I think China views it as an effective and fairly low-cost option.”
David Arase, resident professor of international politics at the Hopkins-Nanjing Centre, described the recent Chinese measures against Japan as “just another of China’s use of trade, in this case the tourist trade, to coerce foreign actors who are economically dependent on China to bend to China’s will”.
Such measures, however, could also work against China.
Arase suggested that China’s approach could be viewed by some countries as part of its so-called Wolf Warrior diplomacy – a reference to Beijing’s combative rhetoric against other countries – and the “orchestrated use of military threats, diplomacy, economic coercion, political sanctions and cognitive warfare”.
“This latest episode of Wolf Warrior diplomacy may only deepen perceptions that China is a bully and a threat to regional peace and stability,” he said.
The Chinese measures are a form of economic coercion, according to Mong Cheung, a professor at the school of international liberal studies at Waseda University in Tokyo. He warned that the actions could worsen perceptions of China by its neighbours and harm the nation’s international image.
“I think this approach is counterproductive and ineffective,” he added.
Arase said China’s strategy would be effective against countries that were economically vulnerable to China and could “distract domestic elements from their discontent and rally them around the flag in support of the [Communist Party] regime”.
In the past week, China’s state media has launched attacks on the Japanese leader and her remarks. People’s Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece, on Monday condemned Takaichi’s remarks, calling them “tantamount to invoking the ghost of militarism”, a reference to the ideology that fuelled imperial Japan’s aggressive expansion from the late 19th century to the end of World War II.
“The international community, especially Asian countries, must be on high alert to Japan’s strategic trajectory,” the commentary said.
“Takaichi’s renewed reference to the so-called survival-threatening situation gives ample reason to worry that Japan may repeat the disastrous path of militarism,” the article said.
Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Affairs at Renmin University in Beijing, called China’s decision to urge its citizens to avoid travelling to Japan a “routine reminder”.
“Chinese tourists are already making a conscious choice to visit Japan less frequently, even though there are no safety concerns,” he said. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
