Description
Taking its point of departure in the “emotional turn”, this article considers the interactive process of conflict escalation and emotional assertiveness related to the persistent and intractable issue of Taiwan and specifically, when, why and how Beijing’s diplomatic practices directed towards Tokyo and related to Japan’s engagement with Taiwan take an emotionalized form. Emotional assertiveness – where state representatives publicly express moral indignation and urge offenders to apologize in order to stop them, or to deter others, from violating China’s red lines (Forsby 2025) – has become a defining feature of China’s diplomacy. It has also been a feature of Sino-Japanese political relations, albeit to varying degrees and at different junctures over more than 50-years of diplomatic ties. Based on a systematic review of episodes since 2010 and through a discursive analysis of written sources and semi-structured interviews, the article considers the responses of Japan and Taiwan to Beijing’s emotional assertiveness. It asks: what are the effects of China’s emotional assertiveness on Japan-Taiwan relations and on Japan’s own diplomatic practices toward Taiwan? It demonstrates how issues where Japan may have made conciliatory gestures in the past are increasingly becoming issues where Tokyo opts to either wait out the episode or respond defiantly.
