BEIJING \u2013 China on Monday condemned the \u201cevil designs\u201d of Taiwan Premier Cho Jung-tai\u2019s rare visit to Japan over the weekend, on a trip he said was to support the island\u2019s baseball team and was private.<\/p>\n
Cho flew to Japan on Saturday to watch Taiwan play in the World Baseball Classic, in what Taiwanese media said was the first trip to the country by a premier since Japan and Taiwan broke formal diplomatic ties in 1972.<\/p>\n
China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, routinely lambasts any overseas trips by its leaders, but used especially strong language to target Cho.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe person you mentioned harbored evil designs; acting stealthily and sneakily, he ran to Japan to engage in little tricks of seeking independence and making provocations,\u201d Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told reporters in Beijing.<\/p>\n
\u201cJapan\u2019s indulgence of provocation and unbridled recklessness will certainly pay a price, and all consequences arising from this must be borne by the Japanese side.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking in Tokyo earlier in the day, Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said the Taiwan government had characterized the visit as \u201cprivate\u201d and that Tokyo was not in a position to comment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no contact with Japanese government officials,\u201d Kihara said.<\/p>\n
Cho told reporters in Taipei on Sunday he was on a private visit to watch baseball.<\/p>\n
Taiwan\u2019s government rejects Beijing\u2019s sovereignty claims and says only the island\u2019s people can decide its future. It says it also has a right to engage with other countries without China\u2019s interference.<\/p>\n
In 2022, Taiwan President Lai Ching-te, who was then vice president, went to Japan, also on a private trip, to pay his respects following the killing of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.<\/p>\n
China was angered by comments from Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could bring about a Japanese military response.<\/p>\n
Japan ruled Taiwan as a colony from 1895 to 1945 and the two have close though unofficial ties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BEIJING \u2013 China on Monday condemned the \u201cevil designs\u201d of Taiwan Premier Cho Jung-tai\u2019s rare visit to Japan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[176],"tags":[12,462,36040,177,179,180,178,358,488],"class_list":["post-54232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics","tag-china","tag-china-japan-relations","tag-cho-jung-tai","tag-japans-politics","tag-japanese-politics","tag-politics","tag-politics-of-japan","tag-sanae-takaichi","tag-taiwan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}