No plan for Japan-China meeting at G20 as Taiwan Strait row deepens

China has ruled out a leaders’ meeting with Japan at the coming G20 summit in South Africa, as ties between the two Asian giants continue to fray over Taiwan.

“I can tell you that Premier Li Qiang does not have a meeting arrangement with Japanese leaders,” Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry, said at a regular media briefing on Monday.

Li and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi are expected to attend the Group of 20 gathering in Johannesburg on November 22 and 23, and it was hoped that a meeting between the two could go some way to repairing differences.

Tensions surfaced when Takaichi told a parliamentary committee on November 7 that a military attack by mainland China on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, which could allow the deployment of Tokyo’s self-defence forces.

She later said the comment was “hypothetical” but she did not retract the statement.

The remarks have been seen as a departure from Tokyo’s long-term strategic ambiguity on how it would react to military actions against Taiwan.