Long winter ahead for strained Japan-China ties

An off-the-cuff remark by new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi that triggered Japan’s biggest bust-up in years with powerful neighbour China was not meant to signal a new hardline stance.

- STORY: TAMIYUKI KIHARA / REUTERS

But after openly stating how Japan might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan, she will struggle to defuse a dispute that could hammer the economy, government officials said.

China has shown its displeasure with steps designed to inflict pain on the world’s fourth largest economy after Ms Takaichi’s response, which officials said was unscripted, to an opposition lawmaker’s query in her first parliamentary grilling.

These range from a boycott on travel to a halt on imports of its seafood and cancellations of meetings and cultural events.

But Ms Takaichi cannot satisfy Beijing’s core demand to retract her comment that an attack on Taiwan, the democratically-governed island claimed by Beijing, could bring a military response from Tokyo, the officials said.

“It would have been better not to say it, but it’s not incorrect,” said one of the officials. “We can’t retract it.”

Opinion polls suggest the comments have not damaged Ms Takaichi’s robust popularity at home, however.

Her “remarks do not change the government's existing position,” a spokesman for her office said, adding, “Japan remains open to various forms of dialogue between the two countries.”