Tokyo said on Wednesday that it had protested “extremely inappropriate remarks” by China’s ambassador to Japan earlier this week, which appeared to insinuate that the Japanese people would be “brought into the fire” of conflict over support for self-ruled Taiwan.
The government’s top spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi, said Tokyo had lodged a “severe protest” with Beijing over Ambassador Wu Jianghao's remarks before a group of Japanese politicians and scholars on Monday, which coincided with a delegation from Japan attending the inauguration of new Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te.
Beijing regards the new Taiwanese leader as a “dangerous separatist,” with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi late Tuesday describing Lai as “disgraceful.”
Speaking at a news conference, Hayashi emphasized that “peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait is important not only for the security of our country, but also for the stability of the international community as a whole,” adding that Japan's “consistent position” has been that issues surrounding Taiwan “be resolved peacefully through dialogue.”
In his comments Monday before an audience that included former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, Wu slammed the pro-Taiwan delegation’s attendance of Lai’s inauguration and alluded to Japan being dragged into any conflict over the island.
"Once the country of Japan is tied to the tanks plotting to split China, the Japanese people will be brought into the fire," he said.
China’s ruling Communist Party views Taiwan as a renegade province that must be united with the mainland, by force if necessary, and has called the issue nonnegotiable. Japan does not have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but has in recent years beefed up what it says are nongovernmental ties with Taipei.
In recent years, fears of a war over the island have risen in tandem with the growth of China’s military power, with some top U.S. military officers even claiming Beijing could be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.
Prominent Japanese officials, including Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, have underlined Tokyo’s view that any emergency over Taiwan would also represent a crisis for Japan, with the far-flung island of Yonaguni, Okinawa Prefecture, sitting just 110 kilometers from Taiwan.
Lai himself has said that he views Japan and Taiwan as sharing a common destiny and mutual security concerns, even going so far as to state that “Taiwan’s emergency is Japan’s emergency, and vice versa.”
On Monday, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo stressed the importance of the issue for Sino-Japanese ties, which have faced headwinds in recent months, including over security issues and Beijing’s blanket ban of Japanese seafood imports last year, the latter following Japan’s decision to release treated radioactive water from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant into the ocean.
“The Taiwan issue is the core of China's ‘core interests,’” the embassy spokesperson said in a statement. “It is related to the political foundation of China-Japan relations and the basic trust between the two countries. It is an insurmountable red line. Improving and developing Sino-Japanese relations must be based on adhering to the ‘One China’ principle.”
The row comes just days ahead of the two countries’ anticipated trilateral summit next week with South Korea in Seoul.
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