A Japanese official blasted China’s claims that Japanese 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 spiraling.
China vowed to take resolute self-defense against Japan if it “dared to intervene militarily in the Taiwan Strait” in a letter delivered Friday to the UN.
“I’m aware of this letter,” said Maki Kobayashi, a senior Japanese government spokeswoman.
Photo: Pool Photo via AP
“The claim our country has altered its position is entirely baseless,” she said on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Johannesburg on Saturday.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately reply to a request for comment made outside working hours.
A crucial sticking point is the fundamental mismatch between how both sides understand 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,” Kobayashi said, adding Tokyo was “committed to dialogue” with its neighbor.
The G20 would not be the venue for that. China said there are no plans for Takaichi to meet Chinese Premier Li Qiang (李強), who is representing his country at the gathering, although on Saturday they were stood just three people apart for a group photo.
Underscoring the acrimony, Chinese state media pointed out Takaichi was “about an hour late” to the summit, after she missed the red carpet arrivals.
China has also reportedly canceled a trilateral meeting with the culture ministers of South Korea and Japan that was scheduled for this month.
In the absence of diplomacy, the war of words is intensifying. On Friday, the Chinese embassy in Japan wrote on social media that China would have the right to carry out “direct military action” without needing authorization from the UN Security Council if Japan took any step toward renewed aggression. That post cited UN Charter clauses regarding “enemy states” during World War II, without further elaboration.
It is unclear where the off-ramp lies in a fallout that has already seen some Chinese tourists cancel trips to Japan, and Beijing impose curbs on seafood imports from its neighbor. While Takaichi has said she has learned her lesson and would refrain from specifying a possible scenario in which Japan could deploy troops in future, she has refused to recant.
China is Japan’s biggest trade partner.
“China is an important source of importation of rare earths,” Kobayashi said, adding that Tokyo has worked to decrease that reliance.
“Peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait are vital for national security,” he added.
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
MORE RESPONSIBILITY: Draftees would be expected to fight alongside professional soldiers, likely requiring the transformation of some training brigades into combat units The armed forces are to start incorporating new conscripts into combined arms brigades this year to enhance combat readiness, the Executive Yuan’s latest policy report said. The new policy would affect Taiwanese men entering the military for their compulsory service, which was extended to one year under reforms by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2022. The conscripts would be trained to operate machine guns, uncrewed aerial vehicles, anti-tank guided missile launchers and Stinger air defense systems, the report said, adding that the basic training would be lengthened to eight weeks. After basic training, conscripts would be sorted into infantry battalions that would take
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
‘REALLY PROUD’: Nvidia would not be possible without Taiwan, Huang said, adding that TSMC would be increasing its capacity by 100 percent Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Saturday praised and lightly cajoled his major Taiwanese suppliers to produce more to help power strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI), capping a visit to the country of his birth, where he has been mobbed by adoring fans at every step. Speaking at an impromptu press conference in the rain outside a Taipei restaurant, where he had hosted suppliers for a “trillion-dollar dinner,” named after the market capitalization of those firms attending, Huang said this would be another good year for business. “TSMC needs to work very hard this year because I need a lot
RSS