China's 'wolf warrior' diplomacy complicates ties with Japan

A fierce diplomatic outburst from Beijing heightened tensions after Japan warned of a Taiwan-related crisis

Welcome back to What’s Happening in China, your weekly China brief.

In the Diet last week, when asked by an opposition lawmaker about “survival-threatening situations”—a legal classification that allows Japan to deploy its military to help defend itself and its allies—Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi cited a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. She said such an attack would constitute “an existential threat” to Japan, and noted that strikes on U.S. warships involved in the conflict could compel Tokyo to intervene militarily in support of its ally.

Beijing reacted with fury. In a now-deleted post on X, Xue Jian, China’s consul general in Osaka, wrote that “the intruding dirty neck must be cut off without a moment’s hesitation.”

On Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said Japan “must correct its wrongdoing at once and retract the unjustified remarks,” calling them “a blatant provocation to the post-WWII order” and “a great blow to China-Japan relations.” “Those who play with fire will perish by it!” he said.

On Friday, Beijing summoned the Japanese ambassador for a formal rebuke of Takaichi’s comments, while Tokyo called in the PRC representative over the consul’s threat. According to the Japan Times, “the ruling Liberal Democratic Party adopted a resolution calling for a decisive response, including designating Xue as persona non grata for possible expulsion from Japan.”

Internationally, Beijing presents itself as a peace-loving government. But its support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, its actions in the South China Sea, and episodes like this make that image hard to sustain.

Let’s jump into it.

— PC

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Through the Lens

Erhai Lake in Dali, Yunnan Province

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In Focus

I. Wolf warrior diplomacy

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.

Read: China-Japan feud: How Takaichi’s Taiwan comments drew fury from Beijing (NBC News)

Related:

• China advises against travel to Japan amid escalating row over PM’s Taiwan comments (The Guardian)

• Japan protests Chinese travel alert, presses for stable ties (Kyodo News)

• China sharpens its language on Taiwan as part of ‘longer-term’ strategy (The Guardian)

II. A strange paradox

Every Monday morning, the stirring strains of China’s national anthem stream into my Beijing apartment from the elementary school across the street. Young students in uniform stand in neat rows on a freshly turfed playground as the Chinese flag inches up a pole. Nearby streets are lined with flowerpots, ginkgo trees and propaganda signs exhorting citizens to love their nation.

For much of my life that directive had felt superfluous. China’s economy boomed, and we were proud of our country.

That pride is harder for many of us to summon today. Behind the orderliness of everyday life, a quiet desperation simmers. On social media and in private conversations, there is a common refrain: worry over joblessness, wage cuts and making ends meet.

Chinese people today live with a strange paradox.

Internationally, China looks strong. It is America’s only rival in terms of the power to shape the world. The recent meeting between President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China, in which the leaders announced a trade-war truce, has fed this narrative — one that Beijing is only too happy to promote — a resilient nation united in the face of external challenges.

That muscular facade is punctured here in China, where despair about dimming economic and personal prospects is pervasive. This contrast between a confident state and its weary population is captured in a phrase Chinese people are using to describe their country: “wai qiang, zhong gan,” roughly translated as “outwardly strong, inwardly brittle.”

Read: From Here in Beijing, China Doesn’t Look So Strong (The New York Times)

III. COP30

Having saturated its own market with solar panels, wind turbines and batteries, Chinese companies are now exporting their wares to energy-hungry countries in the developing world. What’s more, they’re investing billions of dollars in factories that make things like solar panels in Vietnam and electric cars in Brazil.

In effect, Chinese industrial policy is shaping the development trajectory of some of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

“From a climate point of view, the developing countries are showing solutions,” said André Corrêa do Lago, the Brazilian diplomat shepherding this year’s international climate talks, known as COP30, in the Brazilian city of Belém.

“I think that emerging countries are appearing in this COP with a different role,” he added.

Is that completely fixing the problem of climate change? No. Most countries, including these big, growing economies, still get the majority of their energy from fossil fuels. Indonesia is still mining vast amounts of coal, the dirtiest energy source. India and China continue their coal-plant building spree. Brazil plans to expand oil production.

But these countries are increasingly meeting large portions of their energy needs with renewable power, both for the cost savings and for energy security reasons. Many are trying to reduce the amount of fossil fuels they import, to relieve pressure on their foreign currency reserves.

Rapidly falling prices of Chinese technology are enabling them to do that. Ani Dasgupta, head of the World Resources Institute, an environmental research and advocacy group, said it shows how economic development can go hand in hand with reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Read: At COP30 in Belém, Brazil, Chinese Technology Is Shifting Climate Politics (The New York Times)

Related:

• What will COP30 mean for climate action? (Brookings)

• China’s Latest Climate Pledges Fall Short of What’s Needed at COP30 (Council on Foreign Relations)

• China Briefing 13 November 2025: COP30 special (Carbon Brief)