Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has rebuffed demands from China to retract her recent comments about Taiwan, saying there was no change to Tokyo’s stance on how it would respond to a major regional security crisis.
Takaichi recently became the first sitting Japanese leader in decades to publicly link a Taiwan Strait crisis with the possible deployment of Japanese troops, prompting a furious response and economic retaliation from Beijing.
Since then, she has limited herself to the more vague position repeated by recent Japanese prime ministers, and she reiterated that stance in remarks to reporters on Friday before departing for a Group of 20 meeting in South Africa.
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