Military threats, summoned ambassadors and even references to beheading: China and Japan are locked in a furious diplomatic spat over Taiwan, with Beijing unleashing language that is far from diplomatic.
The Chinese outrage is directed at Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who told lawmakers last week that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could force a military response from Tokyo, an unusually explicit statement that experts say is a first for a sitting Japanese prime minister.
China, which claims the self-ruling island democracy as its territory and has not ruled out the use of force against it, has demanded that Takaichi retract her “egregious” remarks.
Others have gone further: One prominent Chinese commentator called Takaichi an “evil witch,” while a Chinese diplomat in Japan talked about cutting off the “dirty neck” extending itself into what Beijing considers an internal matter.
Both countries have summoned each other’s ambassadors as the saga enters its second week.
The war of words underscores the complicated relationship between China and Japan, which are major trading partners but have modern territorial disputes as well as lasting historical tensions over Japan’s World War II-era occupation of China.
It was only two weeks ago that Takaichi, who last month became Japan’s first female prime minister, met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of a regional summit in South Korea, during which they agreed to pursue stable ties.
Like its ally the United States, Japan has traditionally been vague as to how far it would go to protect Taiwan — which at its closest point is about 70 miles from Japanese territory — against Chinese military aggression.
But Takaichi, a China hard-liner who has long advocated for Taiwan, told lawmakers last week that Chinese use of force around Taiwan could qualify as “an existential threat,” triggering a military response.
Though former Japanese leaders — including Takaichi’s mentor, the late Shinzo Abe — have made similar comments about military action after leaving office, “it’s breaking new ground for a sitting prime minister to state this,” Jeff Kingston, a professor of Asian studies and history at Temple University’s Japan campus, told NBC News.
The reaction from China was strong and swift, with one comment in particular getting the most attention.
“The dirty neck that sticks itself in must be cut off,” Xue Jian, the Chinese consul general in the Japanese city of Osaka, said in a post on X that has since been deleted.
The Japanese government says it continues to favor a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue and has criticized Xue’s “highly inappropriate” remarks, which some interpreted as a death threat against Takaichi.
The U.S. ambassador to Japan, George Glass, has also weighed in on Xue’s comments. “Time for Beijing to behave like the ‘good neighbor’ it talks repeatedly about — but fails repeatedly to become,” he said in a post on X.
On Friday, Tokyo summoned the Chinese ambassador to Japan, Wu Jianghao, to lodge a protest over Xue’s post.
China said later Friday that Wu had himself “summoned Japan’s Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs, Takehiro Funakoshi, to lodge solemn representations” and assail Takaichi for failing to retract her comments, which it said “violated basic common sense, crossed China’s red line, constituted a military threat, and amounted to war-mongering.”
A day earlierBeijing summoned the Japanese ambassador, Kenji Kanasugi, to warn him over Taiwan.
The Chinese Ministry of National Defense also issued a warning on Friday, saying that Japan would “inevitably crash against the steel wall” of the Chinese military if it intervenes in the Taiwan Strait, “paying a bitter and heavy price.”
Takaichi has also been excoriated in Chinese state media. A Friday editorial in the People’s Daily newspaper said the Taiwan remarks by Takaichi, who has vowed to increase defense spending and favors revising Japan’s pacifist constitution, were “aimed at finding an excuse for Japan’s military expansion.”
Hu Xijin, a Chinese nationalist commentator, said Takaichi was an “evil witch” who had “successfully ignited a new explosion of mutual hatred between Chinese and Japanese public opinion.”
Taiwan, which was ruled by China’s Qing dynasty from 1683 to 1895 and by Japan from 1895 to 1945, has emphasized its sovereignty and noted Beijing’s escalating military activity in the Taiwan Strait.
China’s warnings to Japan “underscore its hegemonic mindset and demonstrate that it is a troublemaker intent on unilaterally changing the international order,” the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said this week.
None of this may matter all that much to Takaichi, who was expected to clash with Beijing on Taiwan and other issues.
China’s harsh response will only “enhance her reputation” among conservatives in Japan, Kingston said. It could also give her a boost with President Donald Trump, who seemingly hit it off with Takaichi during his visit to Japan last month.
“Taking a hard line on China doesn’t really hurt her in terms of bilateral relations with the United States,” Kingston said.
Because China is so sensitive to the issue of Taiwan, which it describes as its “core of core interests,” its rebuke of Takaichi’s comments is also unsurprising, said Richard McGregor, senior fellow for East Asia at the Lowy Institute, a foreign policy think tank in Australia.
And while Takaichi wants to be seen as firm on national security, “it doesn’t mean that she wants a confrontation with China,” he said in an interview Friday in Hong Kong.
So for all the tense exchanges her Taiwan remarks have brought between the two Asian powers, McGregor said, “it’s not a cataclysmic event.”
Kingston agreed.
Takaichi “went out of her way to be provocative,” he said, “and China responded as expected.”
–NBC