AFTER FEARS waned of a weekend attack on the Japanese embassy in Beijing by outraged patriotic extremists, both China and Japan are still cranking up the rhetoric over a sea dispute.
Beijing said it had decided to break off high-level government contacts after a Japanese court extended to September 29th the detention of Zhan Qixiong, whose trawler rammed a Japanese coast guard ship near islets claimed by both sides early this month.
Japan said it was not officially informed of China’s decision to shut down high-level links. However, Chinese media warned Japan to expect deepening retaliation, calling the detention a test of wills between Asia’s two biggest economies.
Japan’s new foreign minister, Seiji Maehara, has described the disputed islands – called Senkaku by Japan and known as Diaoyu or Diaoyutai in Chinese – as an “integral part of Japanese territory”. Meanwhile, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said: “If Japan acts wilfully, making mistake after mistake, China will take strong countermeasures, and all the consequences will be borne by the Japanese side.”
While the sabres are being rattled more furiously than for years, the prospect of the conflict becoming more than a battle of words is slim, particularly as economic relations between the two countries are so important.
Both president Hu Jintao and premier Wen Jiabao have high-profile international meetings coming up but it remains to be seen if they will meet with their Japanese counterparts.
The Chinese media response was full-on. "China should have a set of plans in place to further sanction Japan, fighting a diplomatic battle with Japan of successive retaliation," ran an editorial in the Global Timesnewspaper.
There have been calls in China for a boycott of Japanese goods, while much of the progress made in putting Japan’s controversial wartime record behind them seems to have been dashed.
Anti-Japanese protests were held across the land on the anniversary of the start of a Japanese invasion of China in 1931 that has historically cast a shadow over ties between the two countries.
Security was tight around the Japanese embassy at the weekend, with soldiers stationed at regular intervals and traffic crawling along amid regular checks.
Much of the focus of the dispute is on rival territorial claims in the East China Sea. This whole area is full of contentious areas, and Beijing has been aggressively pushing its numerous territorial claims, while Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines also have staked claims on all or some of the reserves-rich territory.