BEIJING – China has summoned the Japanese ambassador in Beijing and demanded that Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi retract her recent remarks over Japan’s potential involvement in a Taiwan emergency, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Friday.
In the meeting with Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong on Thursday, Kenji Kanasugi explained Japan’s position on the matter, according to the Japanese Embassy in Beijing.
Last Friday, Takaichi told a parliamentary committee session that a Chinese military attack on Taiwan could present a “survival-threatening situation” that may lead Japan to exercise its right to collective self-defense.
Her remarks triggered a strong backlash from Beijing, with Chinese Consul General in Osaka Xue Jian threatening Saturday in a post on social media platform X to “cut a dirty neck without a moment of hesitation.” The post later became inaccessible.
In Thursday’s meeting with Sun, Kanasugi lodged a strong protest over Xue’s “extremely inappropriate” post and urged Beijing to take action, the embassy said.
Communist-ruled China and Taiwan have been governed separately since they split due to a civil war in 1949. China views the self-ruled democratic island as a breakaway province to be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary, and sees the Taiwan issue as a purely “internal affair.”
BY: The Times Union
