Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi moved to expel China's consul general in Osaka in November 2025 over a social media post widely read as a beheading threat against her, but dropped the plan after Beijing warned it would expel two Japanese diplomats for every one, Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun reported.
The account, published a year after the dispute erupted, shows how close the clash over Takaichi's remarks on a so-called "Taiwan contingency," Japan's term for a military crisis over Taiwan, came to a spiral of diplomatic expulsions, and why Tokyo chose to step back.
Beijing Threatened To Expel Two For Every One
In mid-November 2025, Takaichi met with her chief cabinet secretary and senior Foreign Ministry officials and told them to send Beijing a message: recall Consul General Xue Jian quickly, or Japan would declare him persona non grata. Under international law, that status lets a host country unilaterally order a foreign diplomat to leave.
Calls to expel Xue had spread through Japan's ruling party, and Takaichi was also keen to meet the expectations of her conservative supporters, according to the Yomiuri.
Masaaki Kanai, director-general of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, then relayed the warning in Beijing to Liu Jinsong, at the time director-general of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's Department of Asian Affairs. Liu singled out Japan's consuls general in China. "If you expel one, we will expel two," he said.
Tokyo had expected a one-for-one response, with both sides absorbing equal losses before moving on. The threat of double retaliation upended that calculation. On receiving the report, Takaichi shelved the expulsion to avoid an escalating cycle of reprisals that could push relations even lower. A Japanese government official described it as a difficult decision made to preserve room for dialogue.
Xue's Post Followed Takaichi's Taiwan Answer In Parliament
The row began on November 7, 2025, when Takaichi was asked in the House of Representatives, the lower house of Japan's parliament, whether Japan could exercise collective self-defense in a Taiwan contingency. She replied that if China used force against US forces operating around Taiwan, it could constitute a "survival-threatening situation," the legal threshold that would allow Japan to exercise that right.
Since Japan normalized ties with China in 1972, successive Japanese cabinets have stayed deliberately vague about whether they would get involved in a Taiwan Strait conflict, partly to keep Beijing guessing. Takaichi's answer was more explicit than any of her predecessors', and China quickly accused Japan of seeking to intervene militarily over Taiwan.
On November 8, Xue shared a news post about Takaichi's answer on X and wrote that the "dirty neck" that had been stuck in uninvited had to be cut off without a moment's hesitation, according to a written question submitted on November 12 by lower house lawmaker Jin Matsubara. Xue later deleted the post, but Matsubara still urged the government to declare him persona non grata and expel him promptly.
On November 14, Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Takehiro Funakoshi summoned Chinese Ambassador Wu Jianghao to protest that Xue's remarks were extremely inappropriate and to demand that China deal with the matter. Kanai repeated the protest when he met Liu in Beijing on November 18, urging China to take appropriate measures swiftly.
Tokyo Held Its Position As Beijing Demanded A Retraction
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said on November 13, 2025, that Takaichi's remarks implied Japan might intervene by force in the Taiwan Strait and amounted to interference in China's internal affairs, and he demanded that she retract them immediately. He warned that China would treat any Japanese armed intervention as aggression and would strike back.
Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said on November 18 that whether a survival-threatening situation exists can only be judged comprehensively, using information gathered after a specific event occurs, and that no such situation could arise without an armed conflict. He said Takaichi had explained those conditions in parliament several times, in line with the government's longstanding position.
During his Beijing talks, Kanai also pushed back against China's advisory warning its citizens against travel to Japan, rejected claims that public safety in Japan was deteriorating, and asked Beijing to ensure the safety of Japanese nationals living in China.
Taiwan Contingency: Full Timeline
Storm Media tracks every development in the Japan-China standoff since Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's November 2025 remarks in parliament, newest first and updated regularly.
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