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The US ambassador to Japan has weighed into the escalating row between Tokyo and Beijing, offering “unshakeable” support to Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and condemning what he said was a “classic case of Chinese economic coercion”.
George Glass, who has served as the US envoy in Tokyo since April, told reporters on Thursday that President Donald Trump fully supported America’s closest ally in the region, as both the rhetoric and threats from Beijing intensified.
“I just want to say directly from the president and from myself and from the embassy, for the prime minister, we have her back,” said Glass, echoing comments he posted on social media this week as the row worsened in both tone and on-the-ground impact.
The ambassador’s comments followed nearly two weeks of acrimonious wrangling between Asia’s two largest economies, with China signalling it will block imports of Japanese seafood, cancelling joint events and warning Chinese students and tourists not to travel to Japan.
The dispute — for which diplomats in Tokyo said there was currently “no obvious off-ramp” — erupted from comments concerning Taiwan made by Takaichi earlier this month. During parliamentary questions on November 7, the prime minister said that, in theory, a Chinese attack on Taiwan could draw a military response from Tokyo.
The remarks were the most explicit discussion of such a situation by a sitting Japanese prime minister in parliament.
China, which claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has threatened to annex it by force if Taipei resists unification indefinitely, denounced the comments as interference in what it says is an internal issue and claiming they raised concerns about a revival of Japanese militarism.
Shortly after Takaichi’s comments, China’s consul general in Osaka posted a since-deleted comment on social media site X that appeared to be a thinly veiled death threat to Takaichi. If a “filthy neck sticks itself in uninvited, we will cut it off without a moment’s hesitation”, consul general Xue Jian wrote. “Are you prepared for that?”
Asked by reporters about that post, and the US role in the current row, Glass said: “We will always point out coercion. We will always point out bullying and thuggery that goes on, and this is a classic case of Chinese economic coercion.”
China’s foreign ministry said on Thursday that diplomatic events, such as a trilateral meeting between China, Japan and South Korea culture ministers this month, would be suspended and that premier Li Qiang, the country’s second-ranked official, would not meet Takaichi at the G20 meeting in South Africa this weekend. Beijing commerce ministry said it would “resolutely take necessary measures”.
Chinese commentators’ anti-Japan rhetoric has become increasingly shrill. Victor Gao, a former Chinese diplomat and now vice-president of the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing think-tank, said Takaichi was a “criminal” who was leading the Japanese into an “abyss of despair”.
