How Takaichi’s Taiwan comments drew fury from Beijing

HONG KONG — Military threats, summons of ambassadors and even references to beheading: China and Japan are engaged in a furious diplomatic row over Taiwan, with Beijing unleashing language that is far from diplomatic.

Chinese outrage is directed at Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who told lawmakers last week that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could force a military response from Tokyo, an unusually explicit statement that experts say is a first for a sitting Japanese prime minister.

China, which claims autonomous island democracy as its territory and has not ruled out the use of force against it, asked Takaichi to retract his “egregious” remarks.

Others have gone further: a prominent Chinese commentator called Takaichi a “wicked witch,” while a Chinese diplomat in Japan spoke of cutting the “dirty neck” that extends to what Beijing considers an internal matter.

Both countries have summoned their respective ambassadors as the saga enters its second week.

The war of words highlights the complex relationship between China and Japan, which are major trading partners but experience modern territorial disputes as well as enduring historical tensions linked to Japan’s occupation of China during World War II.

Just two weeks ago, Takaichi, who last month became Japan’s first female prime minister, met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of a regional summit in South Korea, during which they agreed to maintain stable relations.

Like its ally the United States, Japan has traditionally remained vague about the extent to which it would go to protect Taiwan — whose closest point is about 70 miles from Japanese territory — against Chinese military aggression.

But Takaichi, a Chinese hardliner who has long championed Taiwan’s cause, told lawmakers last week that China’s use of force around Taiwan could qualify as an “existential threat,” triggering a military response.

Although former Japanese leaders — including Takaichi’s mentor, the late Shinzo Abe — have made similar comments about military action after leaving office, “this is a first for a sitting prime minister to declare this,” Jeff Kingston, a professor of Asian studies and history at Temple University’s Japan campus, told NBC News.

China’s reaction was strong and swift, with one comment in particular garnering the most attention.

“The dirty neck that sticks to it must be cut off,” Xue Jian, Chinese consul general in the Japanese city of Osaka, said in a post on X that has since been deleted.

The Japanese government says it still favors a peaceful resolution to the Taiwan issue and has criticized Xue’s “highly inappropriate” comments, which some interpreted as a death threat against Takaichi.

US Ambassador to Japan George Glass also commented on Xue’s comments. “It’s time for Beijing to behave like the ‘good neighbor’ it repeatedly talks about – but repeatedly fails to become,” he said in an article on X.

On Friday, Tokyo summoned China’s ambassador to Japan, Wu Jianghao, to protest Xue’s post.

China said later Friday that Wu had himself “summoned Japanese Deputy Foreign Minister Takehiro Funakoshi to lodge solemn representations” and attacked Takaichi for failing to withdraw his comments, which it said “violated basic common sense, crossed China’s red line, posed a military threat and amounted to war talk.”

A day earlier Beijing summoned Japan’s ambassador, Kenji Kanasugi, to warn him about Taiwan.

China’s Ministry of National Defense also issued a warning Friday, saying Japan would “inevitably crash into the steel wall” of the Chinese military if it intervened in the Taiwan Strait, “paying a bitter and heavy price.”

Takaichi has also been criticized in Chinese state media. A People’s Daily editorial on Friday said the Taiwanese remarks by Takaichi, who has pledged to increase defense spending and favors revising Japan’s pacifist constitution, were aimed at “finding an excuse for Japan’s military expansion.”

Hu Xijin, a Chinese nationalist commentator, said Takaichi was a “wicked witch” who had “succeeded in triggering a new explosion of mutual hatred between Chinese and Japanese public opinion.”

Taiwan, which was ruled by China’s Qing dynasty from 1683 to 1895 and by Japan from 1895 to 1945, has emphasized its sovereignty and noted Beijing’s escalating military activity across the Taiwan Strait.

China’s warnings to Japan “underscore its hegemonic mentality and demonstrate that it is a troublemaker determined to unilaterally change the international order,” Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said this week.

None of this may matter much to Takaichi, who was expected to clash with Beijing over Taiwan and other issues.

China’s harsh response will only “boost its reputation” with Japanese conservatives, Kingston said. It could also give him a boost with President Donald Trump, who appears to have hit it off with Takaichi during his visit to Japan last month.

“Taking a hard line on China doesn’t really hurt it in terms of bilateral relations with the United States,” Kingston said.

Because China is so sensitive to the issue of Taiwan, which it describes as its “core core interests,” its rejection of Takaichi’s comments is also not surprising, said Richard McGregor, senior fellow for East Asia at the Lowy Institute, a foreign policy think tank in Australia.

And while Takaichi wants to be seen as tough on national security, “that doesn’t mean she wants a confrontation with China,” he said in an interview in Hong Kong on Friday.

So, despite all the tense exchanges his remarks on Taiwan provoked between the two Asian powers, McGregor said, “this is not a cataclysmic event.”

Kingston agreed.

Takaichi “went out of his way to be provocative,” he said, “and China responded as expected.”