It began, as these things often do, with a single remark in parliament.
On 7 November, in the Japanese Diet, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi was asked what Japan would do if China used force against Taiwan or tried to cut off the sea lanes around it. Calmly, she gave an answer grounded in existing Japanese law: such a scenario could amount to an “existential crisis” for Japan under its 2015 security legislation, opening the door to collective self-defense alongside allies. It wasn’t a war cry. It was a sober recognition of geography and reality—if Taiwan burns, Japan chokes.
Beijing seized on it like a gift.
Within days, China’s foreign ministry was denouncing her comments as “wrongful remarks on Taiwan” that “seriously violate” the political foundation of China–Japan relations. The old language came out again: Japan was warned not to “overestimate its capabilities”, not to “misjudge the situation” in the Taiwan Strait. In other words: sit down, keep quiet, and pretend you’re not in the neighborhood.
Then the mask slipped.
Xue Jian, China’s consul-general in Osaka, took to X (Twitter) and posted a line that would have been unthinkable from any normal diplomat: “We have no choice but to cut off that dirty neck that has lunged at us without a moment’s hesitation. Are you ready?” The target was unmistakable-the Japanese prime minister. The post was later deleted, but not because Beijing suddenly discovered shame. It had done its job at home: feeding nationalist rage and signaling that, in the eyes of at least one senior Chinese official, decapitation fantasies count as diplomacy.
On 14 November, the campaign moved from words to wallets. China’s authorities advised their citizens to avoid traveling to Japan, citing vague “security risks” and alleged harassment. Airlines offered free refunds and changes for Japan-bound flights. Extra questioning appeared at airports. Tourism, business trips, student exchanges-ordinary human contact became leverage. If Japan even talks about defending itself in a Taiwan contingency, Beijing will make it expensive.
The message at sea wasn’t any softer. From 17 to 19 November, China held live-fire drills in the central Yellow Sea, closing off a zone to civilian traffic. Almost at the same time, vessels from the China Coast Guard pushed into waters around the Senkaku Islands, which Japan administers and China claims. Japanese patrol ships responded, warning them out of its territorial sea. To hear Beijing tell the story later, Japan was the aggressor. On the water, the reality was simple: Chinese guns were firing; Chinese ships were testing the line.
On 20 November, China’s commerce ministry complained that economic cooperation with Japan had been “damaged”-as if its own travel advisories and nationalist hysteria had nothing to do with it. A planned meeting of culture ministers from China, Japan and South Korea was quietly cancelled. Culture, trade, tourism, regional dialogue-all of it was now hostage to Beijing’s anger over one parliamentary answer in Tokyo.
China’s foreign minister Wang Yi turned up the volume, accusing Takaichi of crossing a “red line” and warning darkly of the “resurgence of Japanese militarism.” The ghosts of the 1930s were dragged out again, not as careful historical reflection but as a convenient bludgeon. The irony was hard to miss: a government that flies fighter jets around Taiwan almost daily was lecturing Japan about militarism because Tokyo dared to plan for its own defense.
Then came the performance in New York.
On 22 November, China’s ambassador to the United Nations, Fu Cong, sent a formal letter to Secretary-General António Guterres, asking that it be circulated to every member state. In it, he accused the Japanese prime minister of a “grave violation of international law,” claiming her comments amounted to a threat of “armed intervention” in China’s “internal affairs.” If Japan intervened in a Taiwan conflict, Fu warned, it “would be an act of aggression,” and China would “resolutely exercise its right of self-defense.”
Gone were the death threats on social media, the travel bans, the live-fire exercises, the coast-guard games around disputed islands. In the UN letter, China recast itself as the threatened party: a misunderstood power, forced to contemplate self-defense because a neighbor dared to say out loud what every serious strategist already knows—that the fall of Taiwan would be a direct security crisis for Japan.
Tokyo responded with far more restraint than Beijing had earned. Japan’s UN ambassador, Kazuyuki Yamazaki, fired back in his own letter that China’s accusations were “entirely unacceptable” and stressed that Japan’s defense policy remains “exclusively defense-oriented.” He pointed to China’s “rapid and opaque” military build-up as a genuine source of regional anxiety. The contrast was stark: one side talking about missile ranges and sea lanes, the other side talking about cutting necks.
Yet Beijing wasn’t finished playing the victim.
On 26 November, China’s embassy in Japan renewed its travel warnings, again urging Chinese citizens not to visit, now citing alleged “unprovoked insults and beatings” of Chinese nationals and claiming some had been injured. No hard evidence was made public, just a familiar story line: Chinese people under siege in a hostile Japan. It fits neatly into the propaganda template—Japan as the eternal villain, China as the perpetual target of indignity even as the economic pressure inflicted by these warnings falls heavily on Japanese workers and Chinese travelers alike.
The party’s flagship newspaper, People’s Daily, joined in with an editorial under its signature “Zhong Sheng” byline, calling on the United States to “rein in Japan” and warning against any revival of “Japanese militarism” after Takaichi’s comment on Taiwan. The date was late November 2025; the rhetoric sounded like a time capsule from 1945. Meanwhile, warplanes and ships bearing the five-star red flag continued to circle Taiwan and probe disputed waters.
Set out in order, the pattern is brutally clear:
7 November: a Japanese prime minister says that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger an “existential crisis” for Japan and collective self-defense.
Mid-November: a Chinese diplomat threatens to “cut off that dirty neck,” Beijing tells its citizens to stay away from Japan, live-fire drills begin in the Yellow Sea, and Chinese ships press into contested waters.
20 November: a culture ministers’ meeting is cancelled, trade and tourism become weapons, and senior officials warn of a “red line” and revived “militarism” in Japan.
22–23 November: China goes to the UN, accuses Japan of a “grave violation of international law,” and warns that any Japanese move in a Taiwan conflict would be “aggression” met with “self-defense.”
26–27 November: travel warnings are renewed, horror stories about attacks on Chinese citizens in Japan are amplified, and state media demand that others “rein in” Tokyo.
One side answers questions in its own parliament about how to defend its people and sea lanes if war breaks out nearby. The other side responds with threats, drills, economic coercion, and then marches into the UN chamber to claim it is the one under siege.
This is not careful, balanced diplomacy. It is narrative warfare: redefine “defense” so that Chinese missile drills are normal, while Japanese contingency planning is a crime; recast years of aggressive posture around Taiwan as mere “self-defense,” while any hint of resistance from neighbors becomes “aggression.”
The world doesn’t have to buy that story. You don’t need to love Japan’s security choices to see what is happening here. A government that surrounds Taiwan with warships, bullies neighbors at sea, and lets its diplomats fantasize about beheading elected leaders is now insisting it is the victim because someone dared to describe what that might mean for their own country.
