In the roughly three weeks since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi commented on a possible Taiwan contingency in the Japanese Diet, China has unleashed economic reprisals, nationalist barbs and a diplomatic offensive to show its displeasure.
Now, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government is escalating the dispute with an appeal to the UN, a move aimed at pressuring countries to side with China’s stance on a potential conflict over Taiwan — or stay out of its way.
In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday last week, Chinese Permanent Representative to the UN Fu Cong (傅聰) accused Takaichi of contravening international law with her comments, which publicly linked a Taiwan Strait crisis with the possible deployment of Japanese troops.
Photo: AP
“If Japan dared to intervene militarily in the Taiwan Strait, it would be an act of aggression,” Fu wrote.
The letter accused Japan of undermining the “post-[World] war [II] international order,” citing documents that back China’s assertion that it has sovereignty over Taiwan.
Xi reinforced that message in a telephone call on Monday with US President Donald Trump, saying that “Taiwan’s return to China is an integral part” of the order after the war.
In its own letter to the UN, Japan criticized an earlier missive from China as misrepresenting the nature Takaichi’s remarks, saying Beijing’s letter was “inconsistent with the facts and unsubstantiated.”
“China’s assertion that Japan would exercise the right of self-defense even in the absence of an armed attack is erroneous,” Japanese Ambassador to the UN Kazuyuki Yamazaki wrote in a letter to Guterres dated Monday.
“Japan’s fundamental defense policy is the posture of passive defense strategy, which is exclusively defense-oriented, contrary to the Chinese side’s claims,” Yamazaki wrote.
A Japanese government spokesman echoed those views yesterday.
“Factually incorrect claims by the Chinese side cannot be accepted, and I believe it is necessary for the Japanese government to firmly rebut and communicate this,” Japanese government spokesman Minoru Kihara told a news conference.
China’s moves seek to further its claims to Taiwan and widen the dispute beyond Japan in an international body where Beijing enjoys wide support.
In invoking the right to self-defense and equating a Japanese intervention as an act of aggression, Beijing is effectively asserting that no country should come to Taiwan’s defense in the event of an invasion.
The letter “could be the first step of China’s new efforts to establish the legal ground and narrative” for a potential military move, including firing at Japanese assets, said William Yang, senior analyst for Northeast Asia at the International Crisis Group.
While former US president Joe Biden repeatedly stated that the US would defend Taiwan in an attack from China, Beijing carefully calibrated its responses as it knew Washington could “inflict real pain” on Beijing, Yang said.
Japan’s economic reliance on China, by contrast, makes it an easier target.
China “wants to see how much would the Trump administration be willing to offer Japan concrete support,” Yang said.
The UN letter is the latest step in China’s effort to rally international support in its spat with Japan.
While it is not a formal resolution requiring member states to vote, it forces every country to consider where it stands on the issue — and that might be good enough for China.
“It only needs silence, because silence for China means acquiescence, acceptance,” said Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief Asia-Pacific economist at Natixis SA, who has researched China’s influence at the UN. “And nobody’s saying this is outrageous. So this is why for China this is already a big win.”
In their broadsides against Takaichi, Chinese officials and state media commentaries have frequently evoked Japan’s wartime aggression against China and other Asian nations, accusing her government of returning to a dangerous path of “militarism.”
Fu has also seized on Japan’s alleged transgression in arguing against its bid for a seat on the UN Security Council.
On Friday, the Chinese embassy in Japan posted on X 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.
Japan refused to let that one slide, saying 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,” senior Japanese government spokeswoman Maki Kobayashi said in a statement.
China’s narrative relies heavily on a legal distinction Beijing has aggressively promoted since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Chinese officials have repeatedly rejected parallels between the two, arguing that while Ukraine is a sovereign state, Taiwan is a “territory of China” and the dispute is “internal.”
From this perspective, Beijing has accused the US and its allies of “double standards,” upholding Ukraine’s borders while violating China’s sovereignty over Taiwan.
Now by baking this logic into formal UN communications, China is attempting to establish that any foreign military assistance to Taiwan is not a defense of democracy, but an illegal violation of Chinese territory.
Russia has been one of the few countries joining Beijing to reprimand Takaichi. US allies have largely kept quiet so far.
For China, the relentless focus on Takaichi also serves a domestic political purpose: Making Xi look strong by not ceding ground to a historical enemy on one of its most sensitive domestic political issues.
The spat allows China to boost domestic nationalism while also serving to deter any other countries from speaking out regarding Taiwan, said Sung Wen-ti (宋文笛), a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council‘s Global China Hub.
“By getting other states to vocalize support for China’s position at the UN, China is trying to project legitimacy of its position via strength by numbers,” Sung said. “When two major economic giants are fighting, the path of least resistance is simply to keep one’s head down.”
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