Xi Jinping’s plan to break Japan’s new PM Sanae Takaichi and isolate Taiwan
Almost a fortnight ago, Sanae Takaichi made some frank comments about Tokyo’s potential response if China launched a military invasion of Taiwan. Beijing is still erupting.
First China’s consul-general in Osaka threatened to behead the Japanese Prime Minister. Then Beijing launched a volley of bombastic military threats. Next came the economic sanctions.
Once again, China is not happy. The trigger this time?
On November 7, Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, said if China launched a military invasion of Taiwan, Japan might consider it a national security crisis that required Japan to exercise “collective self-defence” – that is, to co-operate with forces from its ally, America.
“It could become a situation threatening Japan’s survival,” Ms Takaichi said.
China’s official outrage was almost instantaneous.
“If you stick that filthy neck where it doesn’t belong, it’s going to get sliced off,” China’s consul-general in Osaka, Xue Jian, declared in a social media post.
China’s embassy in Japan declared that while Beijing would make “every effort to strive for the peaceful reunification” of China and Taiwan, “we will never promise to renounce the use of force”.
The People’s Liberation Army’s top masthead said the Japanese public needed to understand that if Japan got involved in any way, “the entire nation risks becoming a battlefield”.
Almost a fortnight on, Beijing is still erupting.
“Japan must retract its erroneous remarks, repent and change course, offering a clear and satisfactory answer to the Chinese people,” thundered Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning in one of five diatribes directed at Japan during Tuesday’s press conference in Beijing.
Across China’s internet, many cheered images and a video of a Japanese diplomat, Kanai Masaaki, the Director-General of the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, being dressed down in Beijing by his Chinese counterpart, Liu Jinsong, the Director General of the Department of Asian Affairs of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Great satisfaction was taken from the fact that the Chinese diplomat kept his hands in his pockets during their exchange, a portion of which was conducted in front of a press pack.
“This Japanese man came only to be scolded,” said one happy Chinese nationalist commentator.
In many corners of China’s online world, things have been getting very nasty, very fast – all with a notable lack of interference from Beijing’s censors.
“Historical experience proves that the Japanese are inherently despicable, vile and utterly devoid of integrity,” wrote one of many popular and representative comments.
But far from everyone in China is cheering on the latest wave of anger at its East Asian neighbour. It is not for nothing that Japan has become the most popular overseas destination for Chinese tourists.
More than that, Japan has become a refuge for many liberal Chinese who are turned off by the increasing belligerence of their home country. Wealthy, educated Chinese have been leaving the country’s most developed cities for their eastern neighbour by the hundreds of thousands.
By some estimates, the Chinese population in Japan is approaching a million after years of fast growth.
For this group, Beijing’s warnings in recent days for Chinese citizens to take care of their safety in Japan are treated with derision. One ski fan among them told The Australian that many will be happy if there are less Chinese tourists crowding Japan’s slopes this winter.
Other Chinese tourists are much more sensitive to Beijing’s whims. The dispute has already hit group travel to Japan hard.
One major Chinese state-owned travel agency told The Australian that all packages to Japan had been suspended “to the end of December”. The firm’s black-listing may be extended, depending on instructions from Beijing, the agent added.
That is going to hurt Japanese businesses that have benefited from the historic surge in Chinese tourists since travel was allowed again after the end of China’s Covid-zero policy. Stocks in businesses popular with Chinese tourists have been pummelled this week.
An analyst at Japanese bank Nomura forecast China’s anti-Japan restrictions could dent visitor spending by $20 billion (2.2 trillion yen), or 0.36 percentage points of GDP.
This is not a new experience for Japan.
“It’s a playbook the Japanese know,” Michael Green, the head of Sydney University’s United States Studies Centre, told The Australian.
When Ms Takaichi’s mentor Shinzo Abe returned to the Japanese prime ministership in 2012, Beijing mounted a domestic, regional and international campaign to isolate him, recalled Professor Green, a Japan expert who previously served on the White House’s National Security Council.
China’s ambassador in London called Mr Abe the “Lord Voldemort” of East Asia as Beijing tried to portray the Japanese PM as a “dangerous revisionist”.
Those efforts failed spectacularly. Mr Abe won an upper house election in 2013, demonstrating to Beijing that he was the Japanese leader they would have to deal with, whatever their gripes. He went on to become Xi’s biggest rival in international affairs as his championing of a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” was embraced by America, Australia and beyond.
Ms Takaichi is more hawkish than some of her predecessors. Her comments, which echoed language used by Mr Abe, appear to have been an attempt to increase deterrence by speaking frankly about Beijing’s rising military threats.
“When she said an attack by China on Taiwan would be a threat to Japan’s national survival, she was publicly saying what everybody in the Japanese government knew but never said out loud,” says Professor Green.
Why did she do it now, only weeks after becoming PM?
“I don’t think it’s for reasons of populism. I think she’s laying the predicate for increasing defence spending and also for the role of this new US command” which will work with Japan to “prepare for contingencies, including Taiwan”, he says.
For Ms Takaichi, two paths ahead loom. There is the Abe template, where she consolidates her domestic political position and uses the example of Beijing’s anger to reinforce the defence policies she believes are necessary for Japan.
Many in Canberra and Washington and other capitals worried about deterring China from starting a catastrophic war nobody wants will be privately cheering her on.
Or there is Beijing’s dream scenario, where its trade and tourism strikes help to topple her prime ministership — and, it hopes, creates a cautionary example for her successor. Even better would be if President Donald Trump took a neutral position, or even sided with China, ahead of, or during, his April visit to Beijing, spectacularly isolating Taiwan.
Until then, expect Japan’s “Iron Lady” to dig in while China keeps trying to deal out pain. As the last fortnight has demonstrated, brace for things to get very ugly. “This is visceral for Beijing,” says Professor Green.
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