China-Japan Relations: Pressure Tactics & Future Outlook

BEIJING (AP) — Just days after China issued a warning against traveling to Japan, cancellations began.

Every year, around 3,000 Chinese visit Rie Takeda’s teahouse in an alley in Tokyo’s historic Asakusa district. About 200 have already canceled reservations for their tea ceremony class, through January.

“I just hope Chinese tourists come back for Chinese New Year,” he said, referring to the important holiday period in February. Past experience suggests it could take longer than that.

China’s government is turning to familiar playbook to express its displeasure with Japan for refusing to retract a statement by its new prime minister on the hot-button issue of Taiwan.

As with its tariffs on Australian wines in 2020 and restrictions on imports of Philippine bananas in 2012, Beijing is using its economic influence to pressure Tokyo while launching an avalanche of criticism against its government. The only question is how far China will go and how long the measures will last.

“China’s countermeasures are kept secret and will be implemented one by one,” said Liu Jiangyong, a professor of international relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing. “Anything is possible, because this involves the core of the nation’s fundamental interests.”

China was angered by a statement by Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi earlier this month in which she said its military could become involved if China took action against Taiwan, a self-governing island that Beijing says should be under its rule.

Japan is trying to prevent the dispute from escalating, but has shown no signs of backing down. That matches how some other governments have reacted to pressure from China: Hold their positions and endure retaliation, allowing disputes to drag on for a year or more.

“The diplomatic challenge for both sides is that they have their own domestic audiences and therefore don’t want to be perceived as stepping back,” said Sheila A. Smith, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of “Intimate Rivals,” a book on Japan-China relations.

With several countries, disputes persisted until a political change brought in a new leader not burdened with the baggage of past statements.

Australia’s trade with China has gradually returned to normal since the election of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in 2022; The last step was the reopening of the lobster market. Canada is another country that has begun to repair relations under new Prime Minister Mark Carney.

This is not the first time Japan has faced China’s economic wrath. In 2012, protesters attacked Japanese businesses in China and boycotted their products after a dispute broke out over a group of uninhabited islands that both countries claim. Group tours to Japan have been cancelled.

Based on what happened then, when the number of Chinese visitors fell by a quarter, Nomura Research Institute economist Takahide Kiuchi has estimated that the current travel warning could cost Japan 1.8 trillion yen ($11.5 billion), subtracting 0.3 percentage points from its already low annual economic growth.

This time around, many group trips have also been cancelled, affecting the businesses that depend on them. The Gamagori Hotel in Aichi Prefecture, central Japan, said it had lost more than 2,000 guests. Nichu Syomu, a Japan-based travel company specializing in Chinese tourists, said 300 bookings had been cancelled, describing the loss as comparable to 2012.

China was on track this year to displace South Korea and return to its pre-pandemic position as the top source of tourists to Japan. More than eight million Chinese visited the country in the first 10 months of this year, or 23% of the total, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization.

“It’s a shame,” said Nana Enomoto, a tour operator at Nichu Syomu, noting that Chinese tourism was only just recovering.

Kyren Zhu, who had never been to Japan, had a hard time making the decision. His parents warned him not to go. In the end, the accountant canceled a trip with a friend to see the fall foliage. Her friend moved on and told her that nothing unusual had happened.

“If I had known, I probably would have gone,” he said. “But it’s hard to say. The situation is really out of our control.”

Beijing resident Livia Du, who opened a ski lodge last year in northern Japan, received two cancellations, but spots were quickly filled by other Chinese visitors.

A client told him that since China had taken a clear stance, he had to align with it. Another works at a state-owned company and said staff had been instructed not to visit Japan anytime soon.

Guests seem to be on standby mode, said Du, who quit her job and invested more than two million yuan ($280,000) with her husband to build the lodge in Hokkaido. She was worried that the situation could get worse.

The pressure appeared to spread to other sectors last week. The Chinese release of two Japanese cartoon films was suddenly postponed: the comedy “Hataraku Saibō” (“Cells at Work!” and “Eiga Crayon Shin-chan Chô Karei!” (“Crayon Shin-chan the Movie: Super Hot! The Spicy Kasukabe Dancers” in English).

A comedy festival in Shanghai canceled shows by a Japanese entertainment company, while a book editor said his boss had told him to suspend a project to import a Japanese manga.

The outlook for seafood exports to China remained uncertain, even after Tokyo denied media reports that Beijing had said it was reversing its decision to end a two-year ban on Japanese seafood.

Japan has not provided the technical documentation needed to resume exports, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said when asked about the reports.

China could also target its export of rare earths, which are vital for automobile production and other industries. Beijing found minerals to be an American weak point when it restricted their export earlier this year.

“Japan should first retract its erroneous comments and take concrete actions to maintain the political basis of China-Japan relations,” Mao said last week. “Otherwise, China will have to take further action.”

McGill reported from Tokyo. Associated Press writer Fu Ting in Washington contributed to this report.

This story was translated from English by an AP editor with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool.