Threats and Tokyo’s Resolve: Japan’s China Moment Under Watch
Chinese President Xi Jinping. (Image X.com)
As Beijing’s consul in Osaka issues a chilling threat to PM Sanae Takaichi, the world watches whether Tokyo upholds diplomatic red lines amid memories of Shinzo Abe’s assassination.
By TRH Foreign Affairs Desk
New Delhi, November 28, 2025 — The global spotlight has turned sharply on Japan after a chilling, now-deleted threat by China’s consul-general in Osaka against Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi—an episode many analysts see not as diplomatic indiscipline, but as calculated psychological warfare by Beijing.
The threat was issued by Xue Jian, who wrote on social media that Takaichi’s “dirty neck must be cut off” over her remarks on Taiwan—language so extreme that it shattered the basic norms of diplomatic conduct. Though the post was later deleted, the damage was already done.
According to the Wall Street Journal, people close to Beijing’s decision-making circle described the message as a deliberate, state-sanctioned test of Japan’s political resolve. In Osaka, the city council formally demanded a public apology. Japan’s foreign ministry summoned the Chinese ambassador for a strong protest.
Veteran geopolitics analyst Edward N. Luttwak has been blunt: Japan must expel Xue Jian to safeguard the diplomatic conventions that protect smaller and middle powers. If Tokyo bends, he warns in a post on X, Beijing’s intimidation will only grow. Author Benjamin Qiu echoed the call, arguing that a threat of beheading crosses every imaginable red line.
Yet Beijing’s defenders point to a complicating factor. Analyst T. Nihonmatsu notes that the consul reacted to an incorrect headline initially published—and later corrected—by Asahi Shimbun. Takaichi’s original comments were framed in response to a hypothetical opposition question, not a shift in Japan’s Taiwan policy. Even so, misinformation cannot justify diplomatic terror.
The deeper unease lies in history. Japan has not forgotten the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, an event that still haunts the nation’s political psyche. Against that backdrop, an explicit threat of beheading—even rhetorical—carries a psychological weight far beyond words.
Security analysts argue that this episode fits a broader pattern of coercive diplomacy by the People’s Republic of China—using fear, spectacle and ambiguity to probe the limits of democratic states. From Europe to North America, similar intimidation has triggered expulsions of Chinese diplomats. Japan now faces its own test.
Tokyo’s response will resonate far beyond Osaka. If Japan chooses restraint without consequence, it risks suggesting that even the gravest threats can be walked back without cost. If it acts decisively, it reinforces a principle on which the safety of smaller nations depends: that diplomacy may be adversarial, but it cannot descend into sanctioned threats of violence.
In this high-stakes moment, Japan is not just defending one prime minister. It is defending the rules that separate diplomacy from intimidation—and the world is watching whether those rules still hold.
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