Japan blasts China’s ‘entirely baseless’ claims after UN letter
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Tokyo maintains that Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's response to a hypothetical question did not alter its stance.
PHOTO: AFP
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TOKYO – A Japanese official blasted China’s claims that Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has altered Japan’s position on a Taiwan crisis as “entirely baseless”, calling for more dialogue to stop ties between Asia’s top economies from spiralling.
China vowed to take resolute self-defence against Japan if it “dared to intervene militarily in the Taiwan Strait” in a letter delivered on Nov 21 to the United Nations.
Beijing is seeking to rally international support for its position in a spat over the self-ruled chip hub it views as its territory.
“I’m aware of this letter,” Ms Maki Kobayashi, a senior Japanese government spokeswoman, told Bloomberg News.
“The claim our country has altered its position is entirely baseless,” she said, speaking on Nov 22 on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Johannesburg.
A crucial sticking point is the fundamental mismatch between how both sides understand Ms Takaichi’s remarks
For China, her comments publicly linking a Taiwan Strait crisis with the possible deployment of Japanese troops deviated from decades of strategic ambiguity. Tokyo maintains her response to a hypothetical question did not change its stance.
“We’ve repeatedly explained to the Chinese side the gist of the remarks and our consistent position,” Ms Kobayashi said, adding Tokyo is “committed to dialogue” with its neighbour.
The G-20 will not be a venue for that.
China has said there are no plans for Ms Takaichi to meet Premier Li Qiang, who is representing his country at the gathering, although on Nov 22 they stood just three people apart for a group photo.
Underscoring the acrimony, Chinese state media pointed out that Ms Takaichi was “about an hour late” to the summit, after she missed the red carpet arrivals.
China has also reportedly cancelled a trilateral meeting with the culture ministers of South Korea and Japan that was scheduled for November.
In the absence of diplomacy, a war of words is intensifying.
On Nov 21, the Chinese embassy in Japan posted on X that China would have the right to carry out “direct military action” without needing authorisation from the UN Security Council if Japan took any step towards renewed aggression.
That post cited UN Charter clauses regarding “enemy states” during World War II, without further elaboration.
Japan refused to let this one slide. It pointed out that the UN “enemy state” clauses are now considered obsolete.
“We’re hoping China will act and speak responsibly as a major power and permanent security council member of the UN,” Ms Kobayashi said in a statement.
It is unclear where the off-ramp lies in a fallout that has seen some Chinese tourists cancel trips to Japan, and Beijing impose curbs on seafood imports from its neighbour.
While Ms Takaichi has said she learnt her lesson and will refrain from specifying a possible scenario in which Japan could deploy troops in future, she has refused to recant.
Raising the stakes, China is Japan’s biggest trade partner and a supplier of minerals crucial to its auto industry.
Ms Kobayashi declined to comment on the possible risks of China leveraging its rare earths dominance in the spat, but acknowledged her country’s dependence.
“China is an important source of importation of rare earths,” she said, adding that Tokyo had worked to decrease that reliance. BLOOMBERG
