Beijing and Tokyo’s war of words over Taiwan was expected to be bad news for Japanese businesses in China. Previous diplomatic flare-ups have brought waves of online vitriol, protests and boycotts.
But at a Japanese-invested luxury department store in China’s eastern Zhejiang province, the outlet’s executives seemed largely unruffled. They are already well versed in riding out tense political situations.
The billion-dollar project – which is operated by a major Japanese retail group – had a baptism of fire in China. When it opened in April 2021, the store planned a splashy opening ceremony featuring a string of A-list performers, but the event soon spiralled into a fiasco.
Accusations began to fly that the ceremony fell on the same day the Japanese army had launched an assault on Zhejiang province during World War II. While never proven, the claims went viral and sparked calls for a boycott. Several VIP acts pulled out and the company was forced to scale back the event.
The retailer took a lesson from the debacle: keep a low profile and avoid political sensitivities at all costs. It is an approach many other Japanese businesses in China have followed in recent years, which appears to be paying off as they navigate the latest downturn in China-Japan relations.
The crisis erupted last month after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi indicated that Tokyo might intervene in the event of an armed conflict in the Taiwan Strait, a comment widely interpreted as a deviation from Japan’s long-standing policy of strategic ambiguity.