China ups war of words as Japan starts talks on amending post-war constitution

SEOUL, South Korea — The China-Japan war of words over Taiwan escalated dramatically Thursday — the same day Tokyo’s new ruling coalition opened talks on revising the country’s pacifist constitution and granting the government emergency wartime powers.

In a statement that was an escalation in terms of both diplomatic rank and strength of language, Beijing’s Foreign Ministry warned that Japan could “perish” if it intervened in a Taiwan crisis. The ministry, citing Japan’s history of militarism, added that recent remarks regarding coming to the defense of Taiwan were intolerable.

The references to Japan’s wartime aggression may have been aimed at driving a wedge between Seoul and Tokyo. They follow the first spat between the two U.S.-allied capitals since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi took power in October, potentially impacting three years of Japan-South Korea-U.S. military cooperation in the region.

Beijing and Tokyo have been at trading barbs since Friday, when Ms. Takaichi, in response to a question in the Diet, said that if a Taiwan contingency broke out, including “warships and the use of force … then that could constitute a situation threatening [Japan’s] survival, whichever way you look at it.”

Such a situation would trigger an armed reaction under the principle of “collective defense.”

Ms. Takaichi was not setting new policy; she was restating a 2021 Japanese Defense White Paper that made clear Taiwan’s criticality to Japanese security. Japan’s southernmost island, Yonaguni, lies just 68 miles off the Taiwanese coast.

But her comments drew fury from China’s consul in Osaka, who suggested, in a tweet he subsequently deleted, that Ms. Takaichi should be beheaded. That, in turn, generated demands for an official Chinese apology.

Beijing not only declined to rein in its consul, but it doubled down. On Thursday, Lin Jian, the high-profile spokesman of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, upped the ante.

He accused Ms. Takaichi of making “provocative” and “wrongful” remarks, which “China will by no means tolerate,” and demanded a retraction.

“If Japan should dare to intervene militarily in the Taiwan Strait situation, it would constitute an act of aggression and would face a firm and resolute response from China,” he said.

Tokyo must “stop playing with fire on the Taiwan question,” he warned. “Those who play with fire will perish by it!”

Though he did not refer to events in Tokyo earlier Thursday, Mr. Lin did dredge up memories of the 1937-1945 Pacific War, which saw Japan invade China, then attack European colonial powers and the U.S.

“Over the last century, Japanese militarists have waged aggression more than once under the pretext of [a] ‘survival-threatening situation,’” he noted. “Is Japan going to repeat its past mistakes of militarism? Does Japan try to once again make enemy with the Chinese and other Asian people?”

In Tokyo, representatives of Ms. Takaichi’s Liberal Democratic Party and its new coalition partner, Ippon Ishin No Kai (”Japan Innovation Party”) sat down for talks on revising Japan’s 1947 Constitution.

Ms. Takaichi is widely considered more hawkish than the three premiers who preceded her. She secured an alliance with Ishin, an Osaka-based conservative party, after Komeito, a moderate Buddhist Party, exited its quarter-century-long partnership with the LDP.

The coalition between the Takaichi-led LDP and Ishin marks a shift to the right in Japanese politics.

One constitutional change on the table is an amendment to Article 9, under which Japan renounces war. The other change would grant the government more powers should Japan face a major disaster or armed attack.

Japan’s constitution, drafted by U.S. occupation forces in the wake of the war, committed Japan to pacifism and placed heavy restrictions on its armed forces and their use of force.

But questions have arisen on both sides of the Pacific as to whether Tokyo – facing an expansionist China, a nuclear-armed North Korea and a militant Russia — can realistically maintain its 1947 stance.

Japan first began chipping away at its pacifist constitution in 2014 and 2015 with a “reinterpretation” that releases Japanese forces to engage in “collective defense” if those actions serve the national interest.

That change was finessed by the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Ms. Takaichi’s political mentor.

Mr. Abe was popular in neither Beijing nor Seoul, where wartime memories linger and occasionally explode. Historical disputes were a source of constant tensions between Seoul and Tokyo, to Washington’s irritation.

That situation changed in 2022, when Seoul extended an olive branch to Tokyo, a thawing of relations that enabled a surge of U.S.-led military and intelligence trilateralism in the region.

But clouds have reappeared over Seoul-Tokyo relations in recent days after South Korean jets drilled over Dokdo/Takeshima — a disputed island controlled by Korea but claimed by Japan.

The new tensions among the U.S. allies prompted Chinese commentators on social media Thursday to urge South Koreans to take China’s side in historical and territorial disputes.