His government is intensifying the threats: China’s President Xi Jinping.Image: keystone
After Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi expressed solidarity with Taiwan, China responded with rhetorical anger and military might. How dangerous is the dispute?
November 16, 2025, 8:42 p.mNovember 16, 2025, 8:42 p.m
Fabian Kretschmer, Seoul / ch media
The dispute between China and Japan is becoming ever more widespread. On Sunday, Beijing issued an “early warning” to Chinese people who want to study in Japan. “Recently, social security in Japan has been unstable,” the statement said: “This leads to an increased security risk for Chinese citizens in Japan.”
In fact, the feud between the two neighboring states is political in nature. Last week, the new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi spoke in parliament about the so-called Taiwan question. If Beijing were to attack the democratically governed island with warships, said the 64-year-old politician, it would represent an “existence-threatening situation” that could lead to Japan exercising its right to self-defense.
Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.Image: keystone
What sounds harmless has the potential for geopolitical conflict: Takaichi has for the first time concretely indicated what had previously been left open due to strategic ambivalence – that Japan’s armed forces would come to Taiwan’s aid in an emergency.
From the Chinese perspective, this represents a clear breach of taboo. China’s leadership sees Taiwan as a breakaway province that is trying to be integrated into the People’s Republic – if necessary with military force. The fact that the Japanese state, which had committed terrible war crimes against the Chinese population during the Second World War, was now interfering in this “internal affair” led to a storm of indignation.
Since then, even several diplomats have massively changed their tone. The Chinese Consul General in Osaka, Xue Jian, for example, threatened in a now-deleted post on X: “The dirty head that interferes must be cut off.” An editorial from a state media account asked rhetorically: “Perhaps her head was kicked by a donkey?”
The Foreign Ministry expressed itself most martially on its
Your own people become an economic weapon
Since the weekend, Beijing has turned the diplomatic feud into an economic conflict. Government authorities published a de facto travel warning for Chinese citizens: Japanese politicians had made “blatantly provocative statements about Taiwan” and had “heavily burdened” the atmosphere for mutual exchange and had “significantly endangered” the safety of Chinese citizens in Japan.
Frosty handshake at the Asian summit in South Korea at the end of October: China’s President Xi Jinping and Japan’s new head of government Sanae Takaichi.Image: keystone
The causal connection is outrageous, but in the past the Chinese government has repeatedly abused its own population as an economic weapon. In August alone, over a million Chinese traveled to Japan, making them the largest group of foreign tourists in the country for the current calendar year.
Chinese citizens should now no longer leave any money in Japan. In advance of obedience, the state-owned airlines have already promised their customers that they will refund all costs for tickets to Japan by December 31st.
On Sunday, the Chinese coast guard also made a power-political statement: It sent a ship patrol to the territorially disputed group of islands, which are called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.
It is still unclear whether the conflict will escalate further. But the significance of the cause already extends far beyond the bilateral borders. Beijing wants to send a message to all democracies that might dare to express their support for Taiwan. Then political confrontation and economic retaliation follow.
A number of countries have already experienced this. When South Korea installed an American missile defense shield in 2016 to combat the threat from North Korea, Beijing viewed this as an attack on its own sovereignty. And it punished South Korea with a sudden visa ban on group travel, followed by a boycott of all South Korean pop music and television series.
The economy of the East Asian state suffered billions in losses, but it was not even able to challenge them: the Chinese government had never officially announced its retaliatory measures, but simply denied them.
In the current case against Japan, it remains to be seen whether the Chinese population will adhere to the political direction of their party leadership. There can be no talk of a boycott yet: The Chinese cinema charts are currently topped by blockbuster productions from unwelcome countries – after the new Terminator, the Japanese manga adaptation “Demon Slayer” is in second place. (aargauerzeitung.ch)