A national security official earlier this week warned of Beijing’s “trifecta” strategy of intimidating other countries, after Japan was rebuked for reportedly planning to station an active-duty defense attache at the Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association over the summer.
The Sankei Shimbun on June 4 reported that the Japanese Ministry of Defense was for the first time considering dispatching a serving civilian rather than a retired official to the association amid intensifying Chinese pressure in the Taiwan Strait.
Tokyo has traditionally sent a retired military officer to serve as an unofficial liaison at the association, the newspaper said.
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Although Tokyo declined to comment officially on the matter, Japanese Minister of Defense Nobuo Kishi shared the report on Facebook in what has been interpreted as passive confirmation.
Chinese Central Foreign Affairs Commission Director Yang Jiechi (楊潔篪) on June 7 called Japanese National Security Secretariat Director-General Takeo Akiba.
“Old and new issues are intertwined in China-Japan relations, and difficulties and challenges cannot be ignored,” a Chinese ministry statement quoted Yang as saying during the call.
The Chinese state-run Global Times on the same day ran an editorial urging Beijing to “give Japan a blow to the head to wake it up” over its rumored “rupture” of existing post-World War II diplomatic arrangements with Taiwan.
The newspaper followed that up with another editorial accusing the association of making “small moves” over its 50-year history “carefully calculated to test China’s bottom line.”
Listing its supposed “crimes,” the article gave the association’s address in Taipei and included a photograph of the representative’s business card with a red “X” over his title of “ambassador.”
It also said that “whenever someone on the island expresses discontent with Japan, the association becomes an outlet for their anger.”
A group of Taiwanese unification supporters the next day gathered in front of the association’s office carrying banners protesting Tokyo’s “interference in internal affairs.”
The three events — the call to the Japanese minister, the editorials and the protest — were orchestrated to put pressure on Japan, a national security official said on condition of anonymity.
Yang threatened Tokyo in the phone call, which was cited in a Global Times article maligning the association, they said.
Protesters followed the article’s instruction to organize a “coincidental protest,” incited by the newspaper’s “inflammatory language,” the person added.
Chinese harassment of foreign diplomatic missions is nothing new, the official said, citing another case from earlier this month in which a post promoted on Chinese social media allegedly quoted two US diplomats in Guangzhou as saying that the “hype” around human rights abuses in Xinjiang was “fabricated.”
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