With all else that is going on in the world, it’s easy to forget that China and Japan are still in the midst of a political spat since the latter stages of last year. As a reminder, all of this came about after Japan prime minister Takaichi took office. And she was quoted in saying that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could constitute an “existential crisis” for Japan, in which they be allowed to take military action for self-defense.
Naturally, that didn’t go down well with Beijing – not least with Tokyo trying to meddle with the affairs in Taiwan. This has resulted in China hitting back at Japan by asking citizens not to travel to Japan and also afterwards leading to stricter export controls of dual-use items and rare earth minerals.
The former looks to be continuing with the media outlet above reporting that Chinese airlines are extending free cancellations for flights to Japan up until 24 October. All this as part of Beijing’s push to not want to support the Japanese economy as the diplomatic row continues.
As for the latter i.e. rare earth minerals ban, this isn’t the first involving China and Japan. As a reminder, the two also fought over the long-contested Senkaku Islands dispute over a decade ago and that resulted in Beijing undertaking an undeclared ban on rare earth exports to Japan.
In response, Tokyo sought to diversify their reliance on Chinese rare earth minerals and made a deal with Australia after. And that in turn resulted in the Lynas project that is stationed in Malaysia. The rare earth minerals processing plant there is the largest outside of China, which has made it an attractive and strategic point of interest that even saw US president Trump step in last year.
This article was written by Justin Low at investinglive.com.