China criticises Taiwan for going to Japanese PM Shinzo Abe’s funeral

China criticises Taiwan on Tuesday for “political manipulation” because Taiwan’s Vice President William Lai went to the funeral of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. This was the highest-level official trip to Japan by a Taiwanese leader in decades.

Beijing sees the democratic island of Taiwan as part of its own territory, so countries with diplomatic ties to China usually don’t talk to Taiwan on an official level.

“After the former Japanese prime minister Abe Shinzo unexpectedly passed away, Taiwan authorities seized it as an opportunity for political manipulation,” a spokesman for the foreign ministry, Wang Wenbin, told reporters at a regular briefing.

“Taiwan is a part of China, there is no so-called Vice President.”

Wang also said that the Chinese government had already “representations” to Japanese officials at its embassy in Beijing as well as in Tokyo.

Taiwanese officials didn’t say much about the visit, likely to avoid making Beijing even angrier.

But Taiwanese media said that Lai went because President Tsai Ing-wen told him to. One member of the ruling party called this a “diplomatic breakthrough”

Even though Japan doesn’t officially recognise Taiwan, relations between the two countries have gotten better in recent years. Tokyo has given Taiwan several batches of Covid vaccines and has been more vocal about China’s growing influence in the area.

Japanese officials have also tried to play down the visit. On Tuesday, the country’s foreign minister, Yoshimasa Hayashi, said that Lai went to the funeral “as a private individual”

Hayashi told reporters, “There has been no change to our country’s basic policy to keep our relationship with Taiwan as a non-governmental, working relationship,”

Taiwanese media called Abe “the most Taiwan-friendly Japanese prime minister” and even after he left office in 2020, he still spoke out in support of the island in the face of military and economic pressure from China.

But he left a mixed legacy in China. He was criticised for going to Yasukuni, a shrine that honours the souls of Japan’s war dead, including some who were convicted of war crimes by a US tribunal. His death, on the other hand, caused a wave of happiness on social media.

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