BEIJING/TOKYO, Nov 21 — Trade cooperation between China and Japan has been "severely damaged", the Chinese Commerce Ministry said today, urging the Japanese Prime Minister to retract her comments on Taiwan or face the consequences.
A diplomatic spat between China and Japan has intensified since Sanae Takaichi told Parliament on November 7 that a hypothetical Chinese attack on democratically-ruled Taiwan could trigger a military response from Tokyo.
"Prime Minister Takaichi's openly erroneous remarks concerning Taiwan have fundamentally undermined the political foundation of China-Japan relations and severely damaged bilateral economic and trade exchanges.
"Should the Japanese side persist on its course of action and continue down the wrong path, China will resolutely take the measures required and all consequences shall be borne by Japan," said the ministry's spokesman He Yongqian during a regular news conference.
A spokesman for Takaichi said her comments on Taiwan did not change existing Japanese policy.
US says it will stand by Japan
According to the United Nations (UN) Comtrade data, China is Japan's second-largest export market after the United States (US), buying about US$125 billion (RM518.1 billion) of Japanese goods in 2024, mainly industrial equipment, semiconductors and automobiles
Tokyo could struggle to find alternative markets if China closes its doors to Japanese goods. South Korea, its third-largest export destination, absorbed only US$46 billion (RM190.6 billion) worth last year.
Takaichi's spokesman said she had "no information to provide at present" when asked to confirm reports that China had indicated it would ban all imports of Japanese seafood.
The world's second-largest economy has a record of taking coercive trade actions against its neighbour.
In 2023, Beijing imposed a blanket ban on imports of all Japanese seafood after Tokyo decided to release radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific. The International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN body, had concluded the discharge was safe.
In 2010, China halted rare earth exports to Japan for about seven weeks after Japanese authorities detained a Chinese fishing captain whose vessel had collided with coast guard ships near the Senkaku Islands, which Beijing claims as the Diaoyu Islands.
"Coercion is a hard habit to break for Beijing. But just as the United States stood by Japan during China's last unwarranted ban on Japanese seafood, we will be there for our ally again this time," US Ambassador to Japan George Glass said in an X (formerly Twitter) post today.
The US State Department's deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott posted on X that US support for Japan was "unwavering."
"We firmly oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo, including through force or coercion, in the Taiwan Strait, East China Sea, or South China Sea," Pigott said, without mentioning China.
Before the 2020 ban, China was Japan's top buyer of scallops and a major importer of sea cucumbers.
Relations had looked to be improving, with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Takaichi agreeing in a meeting on the sidelines of last month's APEC Summit in South Korea to "build a constructive and stable China-Japan relationship fit for the new era".
Now, Japanese seafood companies fear a return to past restrictions.
'No immediate off-ramp'
"What is frustrating is that things that were moving forward suddenly went backwards. And given the nature of the issue, this might well happen again," said Sanwa Fisheries president Kazuya Yamazaki, whose company on Japan’s northern Hokkaido island used to export around 200 metric tons of scallops to China annually before imports ended.
His firm is among almost 700 that applied for export permits after China agreed to restart shipments of Japanese marine products. But according to Japanese officials and analysts, there is no easy fix.
"There is no immediate off-ramp, unless Takaichi retracts her comments, which she will not do, as it will be political suicide. China has elevated the situation to a level where they can not easily back down.
"The only solution is to play the long game and wait it out until China begins feeling the pain as well," said Tokyo-based Rorschach Advisory's financial and political analyst Joseph Kraft.
When asked at a regular Chinese Foreign Ministry news briefing today whether China's Premier Li Qiang would meet with Takaichi on the side of this weekend's G20 summit in South Africa, its spokesman said there were no plans to do so.
