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Jane Cai

A little over a decade ago, a diplomatic row with Japan would have been enough to bring people out into the streets in China or at least stir a patriotic retail boycott.
In 2012, for instance, tensions boiled over after Tokyo bought and then nationalised three of the Diaoyu Islands, a group of eight uninhabited islands in the East China Sea that Japan calls the Senkakus.
China and Japan have a long-running territorial dispute over the islands and authorities appeared to tolerate the anti-Japanese demonstrations that broke out in many Chinese cities that year, including attacks on Japanese cars and stores.
Fast forward to 2026 and Beijing and Tokyo are at odds again – this time over Taiwan, an issue that Beijing regards as the reddest of its red lines.
But this time the nationalist flames have not been fanned and Japanese property remains untouched. The stakes are arguably higher but the response has been targeted diplomatic and economic pressure.


Much of the tactical shift, observers say, comes down to one big thing: economics.
The latest row erupted on November 7 when Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told her country’s legislature that Beijing’s “use of force against Taiwan” could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, suggesting Tokyo would deploy its military forces during a conflict in the Taiwan Strait.
Beijing viewed Takaichi’s remarks as a provocative shift from Tokyo’s long-held strategic ambiguity on the matter and accused Japan of interfering in its internal affairs – as it sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary.
Most countries, including the United States and Japan, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the self-governed island by force and is committed to supplying it with weapons.
Beijing’s response included summoning Japan’s ambassador, taking the issue to the United Nations, reinstating a ban on Japanese seafood imports, issuing travel warnings for Chinese citizens on safety grounds, cancelling flights and cultural events, and increasing coastguard patrols around the Diaoyu Islands.
Military incidents, including reports of Chinese jets locking radar onto Japanese aircraft in early December, have added to the tensions but notably absent are the mass street protests, vandalism of Japanese businesses and boycotts of Japanese brands that marked previous flare-ups.


Beijing’s measures now are “restrained and do not go beyond rhetoric, as such measures are of low cost”, according to a Chinese official from a top economic department.
“It is kind of unlikely that China would extend this diplomatic row to more economic arenas or involve military moves, considering that Japan is such an important trading partner for China,” the official said, declining to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
The economic stakes for both countries are high. Japan is China’s third-biggest trading partner and China is Japan’s largest trading partner, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.
But unlike 2012, Beijing is now grappling with different, arguably more formidable economic headwinds as it transitions to a hi-tech and innovation-driven path and seeks to establish new pillars of growth to replace its heavy reliance on the property market.
One of those pillars is domestic consumption but China is struggling to ignite that demand. In the meantime, it needs foreign trade and investment, which is becoming more complex given its trade tensions with the United States and Europe.
Today’s leadership is acutely aware that excessive mobilisation of nationalist sentiment is a double-edged sword
Chinese official
Underscoring Beijing’s effort to prevent economic fallout, Liu Jinsong, the Asian affairs chief of China’s foreign ministry, visited a Japanese manufacturer in Dalian, Liaoning province, in late November to offer assurances and urge the company to keep operating in China, Japanese news service Nikkei Asia reported.
“Beijing has become more cautious in handling external frictions, avoiding the fanning of nationalism to uncontrollable levels,” a second official said, who also declined to be named.
“In past crises, authorities occasionally tolerated or channelled street protests to exert pressure abroad, but today’s leadership is acutely aware that excessive mobilisation of nationalist sentiment is a double-edged sword.
“It can unify public opinion and project strength in the short term, yet it risks morphing into an outlet for domestic discontent.”
Following Nato’s 1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, which killed three Chinese nationals and wounded more than 20 others, tens of thousands of furious people, many of them students, poured onto the streets across China in the largest anti-American demonstrations seen in decades, organised in part with government backing.
More recently, in 2021, a major nationalist backlash erupted in China against international brands such as H&M, Nike and Uniqlo. The companies faced accusations of hypocrisy after expressing concern over alleged forced labour in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region’s production of cotton – claims that Beijing denies.
If discontent were to spiral out of control, the second official said, “it could threaten internal stability”.
So far, Beijing has stuck largely to waging a war of words with Tokyo. State media have published commentaries almost daily, blasting Takaichi’s remarks and warning against a possible resurgence of Japanese militarism.
When posted on Chinese social media platforms, such articles usually attract hundreds of online comments, with most echoing Beijing’s wariness towards Tokyo.
However, former Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin – once one of China’s most prominent nationalist voices – cautioned against further escalation.
“The struggle against Japan could be a protracted one,” Hu posted on social media in November. “Preserving the firmness, rationality and unity of Chinese society ensures lasting resilience and endurance.”
Tong Yiduo, 32, a programmer in Beijing, said he personally would “not do anything violent or extreme” over the dispute as he had confidence Beijing could handle it properly.
“I don’t have the illusion that China will be treated fairly by the US and its allies like Japan. So far, China has fared well in the trade war [with the United States],” he added.
“I believe as long as we focus on science and technological development and make China stronger, no country will be capable of intimidating us.”
Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies in Washington, said nationalism had “not got out of hand this time round” because the Chinese government had “sought to play it both ways”.
Gupta said Beijing was hammering Japan rhetorically as well as punishing it economically in tourism and seafood imports, while at the same time immunising the Chinese economy from blowback “by quietly reassuring Japanese corporates in China”.
Before Takaichi’s remarks, bilateral relations were improving, with Chinese President Xi Jinping meeting the Japanese leader on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings in South Korea in October.
This contrasted with the situation in 2012, when Sino-Japanese relations had been deteriorating for more than a year before the demonstrations broke out, Gupta said.
“This time, Beijing’s tough response is to warn off not just Japan but others too who will be called upon by the United States to militarily support its operations during an armed Taiwan contingency,” Gupta said.
He said Beijing was seizing a “golden opportunity” to criticise Tokyo for its “decade-long movement of the centre of gravity” of Japanese operational defence planning, from the northeast to the southwest theatre in defence of Taiwan.
“But by keeping the response below the rabble-rousing threshold, China also gets to maintain the patina of a law-abiding, responsible nation,” Gupta said.
That said, Beijing had chosen to restrain its citizens from overt protest actions, he added, citing “lingering concerns linked to security incidents faced by Japanese nationals based in China in the recent past” that triggered a diplomatic flashpoint.
“China prides itself as a safe country from a law-and-order standpoint and would like to maintain that reputation,” Gupta said.


That reputation was dented in June 2024, when a man in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, attacked a Japanese mother and child with a knife and killed a Chinese bus attendant who tried to defend them.
Another fatal attack targeting a Japanese citizen took place in September 2024, when a 10-year-old Japanese boy was stabbed by a man in the city of Shenzhen on the anniversary of Japan’s 1931 invasion of China. The boy, born to a Japanese father and a Chinese mother, died a day after the stabbing.
In both cases, authorities presented the attacks as an “isolated incident”.
In general, Chinese views of Japan are complex and contradictory. Deep resentment stems from historical conflicts, especially imperial Japan’s invasion during the second Sino-Japanese war. At the same time, for generations, Chinese have been avid consumers of Japanese culture and goods.
Echo Liao, an undergraduate student in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, and a former exchange student in Japan, said she was “totally not interested” in disagreements between the two East Asian neighbours.
“I am too lazy to learn much about [the row],” Liao added. “I am still willing to travel to Japan because I can get high-standard services and experiences.”
Nevertheless, she said that being willing to “spend money in Japan doesn’t mean you agree with other things”.


Zhiqun Zhu, a professor of international relations at Bucknell University in the US, said that young people in China tended to be indifferent to politics.
“Most Chinese are patriotic, but they do not express nationalistic feelings with gusto now, as previous generations did,” Zhu said. “Social, political and economic conditions have changed so much that the Chinese public have become more sophisticated and cosmopolitan.”
He cited the “lying flat” phenomenon in China – young people spurning intense societal pressure to overwork and overachieve in favour of seeking a minimalist, low-desire life.
Meanwhile, Chinese tourists have continued to visit Japan, though the growth in arrivals slowed significantly after November’s diplomatic row.
According to the Japan National Tourism Organisation, 562,600 mainland Chinese visited Japan in November, up 3 per cent from a year earlier.
Dozens of direct flights remain available daily between major Chinese and Japanese cities in the coming months. And in shopping malls across China, Japanese restaurants and shops continue to draw steady crowds.
Zhu said Beijing would keep exerting pressure on Takaichi with strong rhetoric for some time. But he added that both sides could still wish to de-escalate tensions and find an off-ramp from the crisis.
It was highly unlikely that Takaichi would completely retract her words about the Taiwan contingency, but she and other Japanese officials had dialled back their tone of late and resumed stating a more traditional ambiguous position on Taiwan, he added.
While Beijing might not be fully satisfied, Tokyo was unlikely to give ground diplomatically as anti-China sentiment ran high in Japan, Zhu said.
Through diplomacy and private channels, Tokyo might offer Beijing more explicit reassurance regarding Taiwan than it had stated publicly, he added.
This would “help cool down Beijing’s anger so that both sides can move on”.
Additional reporting by Sylvie Zhuang and Bob Zhao


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China

Diplomacy

With economic stakes high, Beijing seen as ‘more cautious in handling external frictions’, avoiding fanning of ‘uncontrollable’ nationalism


With economic stakes high, Beijing seen as ‘more cautious in handling external frictions’, avoiding fanning of ‘uncontrollable’ nationalism.


Why China is turning down the nationalist heat in its row with Japan

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}With economic stakes high, Beijing seen as ‘more cautious in handling external frictions’, avoiding fanning of ‘uncontrollable’ nationalism

With economic stakes high, Beijing seen as ‘more cautious in handling external frictions’, avoiding fanning of ‘uncontrollable’ nationalism