Name: Will a fishing boat spark a crisis between China and Japan? | About That
Uploaded: 2025-12-03T13:44:16.000Z
Duration: 9 min
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Basic passive voice

Big conflicts are sometimes made worse by very small things.

The second and fourth biggest on the planet.

These islands you need a magnifying glass to see on a map.

But both China and Japan seem to care a great deal about them right now.

Tensions are escalating sharply in East Asia.

At the center of the latest standoff, the disputed Senkaku Islands.

Conflicting accounts from China and Japan, after the latest confrontation around the Senkaku or Diaoyu Islands

China says a Japanese fishing boat entered these waters.

Japan administers them, but China claims them as its own.

The Chinese coast guard says it warned the boat off,

saying it had illegally entered its waters, calling it an act of infringement and provocation.

Its coast guard says it intercepted two Chinese coast guard ships as they approached the Japanese fishing boat,

that these are Japanese waters and that they forced the Chinese ships to leave.

Now, if that's all you'd heard about what was going on between these two countries,

you might be wondering, what's the big deal?

Why is China now telling its citizens, don't go to Japan anymore.

Why might violence between Chinese and Japanese citizens be on the rise to the point where a Chinese diplomat openly called for the beheading of Japan's prime minister?

Well, it goes back to something Sanae Takaichi said in Japan's parliament nearly a month ago.

A very short, very particular legal reference that carries immense meaning about triggering war.

So ultimately, this is about Taiwan, that island nation of roughly 23 million people,

smaller than Nova Scotia, about the size of Maryland, the land of bubble tea and big tech, sugar and street food, but

also a part of the world China has long insisted belongs to it, which Taiwan itself rejects.

Taiwanese sovereignty and Chinese aggression are issues the world treads very carefully around.

For the Chinese to respond, completely understandable.

She could have said, I don't know what I would do or what any prime minister would do in the case of Taiwan, and

I bet you you would have had a Chinese reaction.

China has never ruled out the use of force to reunite with Taiwan.

So when Japan's prime minister was responding to a question in Parliament about potential survival-threatening situations,

she replies by saying a Chinese offensive against Taiwan could be one such situation.

This is important because Sanae Takaichi is invoking very specific legal language.

It has to do with the fact that since the end of the Second World War, a pacifist constitution was imposed on Japan,

essentially forbidding it from engaging in international conflict using force.

If you've ever heard this bit of trivia that Japan has no military,

that's kinda true if you think of militaries only in the conventional sense,

as in a fighting force that can be deployed to fight wars abroad.

Japan's military is meant strictly to be a self-defense force,

except it legislated itself a new militaristic power about 10 years ago,

whereby law, it is now able to use force when an armed attack against a foreign country that is in a close relationship with Japan occurs and as a result threatens Japan's survival.

So by invoking this language, what the Prime Minister is suggesting is that a Chinese attack on Taiwan may be so threatening to Japan's survival

that Japan may be compelled to respond with military force.

So you could see Taiwan as, you know, the reddest of red lines and adding the Japan element, right?

And then it's the second reddest of red lines, given the legacy of Japan's invasion of China and its war atrocities.

She's one of the first leaders, of course, to say it in maybe such a clear, blunt way while serving as Prime Minister.

The very next day, after Japan seemed to imply it could use force to defend Taiwan,

China's Consul General in Osaka wrote this on X in Japanese,

which translates loosely as a threat to chop off the head of she who has charged so recklessly forward.

"Sono kitanai kubi," an insult meaning that dirty or filthy neck.

And "kite yarushika nai," violent rhetoric, suggesting it must be cut down.

Sanae Takaichi refused to take back her words.

She did, however, seem to acknowledge that she had crossed the some kind of line.

I'm pretty sure that previous Prime Ministers have danced around the question and they have not mentioned Taiwan or China.

And so while there was no apology, there was this.

"Going forward, I will refrain from making definitive statements here about specific hypothetical cases."

China's military, along with the country's state media, would begin to frame Takaichi as a warmongering militarist along with a threat.

Any external force that plays with fire will ultimately face the consequences of self-destruction.

And it wasn't long before the regular everyday people of both countries would be pulled in.

China has summoned the Japanese ambassador over comments made by his Prime Minister on Taiwan.

China has issued a travel warning advising citizens to avoid going to Japan.

China has suspended imports of Japanese Seafood.

Japan's warning its citizens to use safety precautions and avoid crowded places in China.

Japanese singer Maki Otsuki was performing in Shanghai when she was interrupted and escorted off stage.

The Chinese government definitely perceives these comments as being rather incendiary.

It knows that as the regime, it has to show its resolve.

It has to demonstrate, certainly to its domestic audience, right to the Chinese people,

that the Chinese Communist Party is, you know, standing up for China's sovereignty, that it's willing to do what it takes.

From China's perspective, they've been watching the dialogue about Taiwan really move in a direction that goes against, I think, China's core interests.

They believe that Taiwan is a province of China and that it's been an inalienable part of China since time immemorial.

It's hard to know why Japan's prime minister crossed this line now.

The speculation I've seen ranges from her wanting to drum up popular support for expanded military funding to the fact that she reportedly just gets two to four hours of sleep a night.

One, this isn't the first and probably not the last time China and Japan's forces will meet out in the open.

Japan's Coast Guard has tracked record numbers of Chinese ships sailing around the islands off Taiwan's coast.

But also, China's saber rattling on Taiwan's future is only getting louder.

China will not compromise when it comes to Taiwan.

We're seeing this squeezing of Taiwan on a number of different areas.

So we're seeing it in international organizations, whether it's the World Health Assembly, Interpol, et cetera.

We're seeing it in terms of military exercises.

The scope, the variety, the depth of those military exercises around Taiwan.

Now, I haven't heard any expert on this subject suggest that China and Japan are readying for war.

That's maybe as unlikely right now as it would be lopsided heavily in China's favor.

But China and Japan are key trading partners.

I expect ad hoc inspections on Japanese businesses in China.

I expect exit bans on some Japanese citizens.

There'll be quite a few different tactics used by the Chinese to try and shape and influence Japanese domestic politics.

Which all makes the point that any deterioration of this relationship has a very immediate,

very tangible impact on many millions of people.