BEIJING: China is escalating its confrontation with Japan over Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments on Taiwan, with state media threatening major countermeasures after travel warnings raised the spectre of economic retribution.
Yuyuantantian, a social media account linked to China’s state broadcaster and frequently used to signal official policy, published a commentary over the weekend warning that Beijing “has made full preparations for substantive retaliation.”
The post hinted at imposing sanctions, suspending economic, diplomatic and military ties, and restricting trade as forms of potential reprisal.
Hours after the post, the People’s Liberation Army Daily reinforced that message by publishing a commentary by a state-affiliated scholar warning that if Japan’s military got involved in the Taiwan Strait “the entire country would risk becoming a battlefield”.
The diplomatic crisis erupted over Takaichi’s comments earlier this month that military force used in any Taiwan conflict could be considered a “survival-threatening situation,” a classification that would provide a legal justification for Japan to support friendly countries that choose to respond.
China is highly sensitive to remarks around Taiwan, the self-ruled island it’s vowed to claim someday, by force if necessary.
The row risks unraveling recent progress in bilateral ties, just a few weeks after Takaichi met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and agreed to improve relations.
The spat also threatens to inflict damage on businesses straddling the key trading partners, as China warns tourists and students about heightened risks in Japan.
Those measures put millions of Chinese tourists – about a quarter of all visitors to Japan annually – on the line, triggering slides in the shares in travel-related stocks, with cosmetics giant Shiseido Co falling 9% on Monday.
Hong Kong also updated its travel advisory for Japan.
Japan is dispatching a senior diplomat to China on Monday in a bid to smooth tensions, public broadcaster NHK reported, citing a senior official at the country’s Foreign Affairs Ministry.
The upcoming G20 leaders’ summit this weekend in South Africa could provide Takaichi a venue to meet with Chinese Premier Li Qiang and mend fences, although a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said they don’t plan to meet.
“This is about setting the terms early in Takaichi’s term, deterring other countries from similar rhetoric, and discouraging Tokyo from taking further steps,” said Bloomberg Economics’ Jennifer Welch.
“Japan is a relatively easy target and tourism an easy lever to pull.”
Takaichi has so far defended her remarks over Taiwan, while Tokyo has said its stance is unchanged from previous administrations.
On Monday, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary Minoru Kihara called China’s travel warning unacceptable.
China’s fallout with Japan comes shortly after Europe welcomed a Taiwanese vice-president for the first time since 2002 outside transit, sparking anger from Beijing. That came amid a flurry of diplomatic outreach between Taiwan and the European Union, which runs against Beijing’s strategy of isolating the global chip hub.
For Tokyo, the economic stakes are substantial. China is Japan’s largest trading partner, and Yuyuantantian’s commentary explicitly noted that Japanese manufacturers depend heavily on Chinese imports for critical materials.
An earlier dispute between China and Japan in 2012 over disputed islands saw a months-long boycott of Japanese goods that affected trade.
China’s travel advisory could slice as much as 1.8 trillion yen off Japan’s economy, or 0.3 percentage point of gross domestic product, according to an estimate by Takahide Kiuchi, an executive economist at Nomura Research Institute and former Bank of Japan board member.
Kiuchi said his estimate draws on similar cases in the past.
In 2012, when China urged its citizens to avoid visiting Japan after Japan nationalised contested islands known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China, the number of Chinese visitors fell by about 25% from the previous year. —Bloomberg
