Amid a heated diplomatic row between Beijing and Tokyo which has shown no signs of cooling off, several employees of China’s state-owned enterprises have been advised to scrap their immediate travel plans to Japan, they told the Post on condition of anonymity.
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One of them, an engineer at a state-owned firm in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, received an unexpected phone call on Tuesday. It was his company’s administrative office, urging him to cancel his coming holiday.
Like employees at many Chinese state-owned enterprises, the engineer can only travel abroad with his company’s permission. His holiday request had been approved last month, and he was due to fly to Osaka in late November.
But with tensions flaring, he now found himself having to scrap the entire trip. “Fortunately, I booked through a travel agency I’d found on social media,” the man said. “We only signed an entrustment contract, so they handled everything for us.”
After some negotiation, the agency refunded his flight and hotel costs, keeping only the visa fee. He said he was still deciding how to use his leave. “I might just travel somewhere in China instead.”
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The escalating dispute, which has seen China issue several warnings telling its citizens to avoid travel to Japan, began after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said in early November that Tokyo might intervene in the event of an armed conflict in the Taiwan Strait. Subsequent talks failed to resolve the impasse.