Japan warns that China is an existential ‘threat’

A war of words has broken out between Beijing and Tokyo over threats to Taiwan. Last week,  Japan’s new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi warned that an attack by China on the island democracy represented an existential “threat.”

Her comments came after Chinese President Xi Jinping commissioned the Fujian aircraft carrier into the naval wing of the People’s Liberation Army. At a parliamentary committee on Friday, she spelled out the dangers of rising tension in the South and East China Seas.

“[If an emergency in Taiwan involved] warships and the use of force, then that could constitute a threat [to Japan’s] survival, whichever way you look at it. [This] situation has become so serious that we have to anticipate a worst-case scenario,” Takaichi said.

The diplomatic row intensified over the weekend when the Chinese consul general in Osaka, Xue Jian, posted inflammatory remarks on X, formerly Twitter. “We have no choice but [to] cut off that dirty neck that has been lunged at us without hesitation. Are you ready,” he asked.

Taiwan … has never been, a province of the People’s Republic of China.

US-Taiwan Business Council

Verbal volleys:

• Furious officials in Tokyo condemned Xue’s post aimed at Takaichi’s comments. It has since been removed as “extremely inappropriate.” But the damage had been done. 
• “We strongly protested and urged that it be taken down immediately,” Japan’s senior government spokesperson, Minoru Kihara, told a media briefing earlier this week.

Delve deeper: China has not ruled out taking Taiwan by force, while Commander in Chief Xi has built the largest surface navy in the world to do just that. The Fujian is China’s third aircraft carrier, the first domestically designed and built.

Between the lines: “With a flat flight deck and electromagnetic catapults for take-offs, [it is] potentially [a] far more powerful naval weapon than China’s first two Russian-designed carriers,” Reuters new agency reported today.

Big Picture: Japan’s outer islands are close to Taiwan, while Tokyo has historic links to the island, which Beijing considers a “renegade province.” Yet, “Taiwan is not, and has never been, a province of the People’s Republic of China,” the US-Taiwan Business Council stated.

China Factor comment: Xi has orchestrated “an unprecedented military buildup,” according to the United States Department of War, formerly known as the Defense Department. Taiwan would be just the first step in Xi’s global ambitions.