 "Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi (R) and US President Donald Trump attend a signing ceremony after a Japan-US Summit at the Akasaka State Guest House in Tokyo on October 28, 2025. AFP File")
Hours after a Wall Street Journal report claimed that US President Donald Trump had urged Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi not to provoke China over Taiwan’s sovereignty, Japan on Thursday dismissed the report, saying “there is no such fact” in what was published.
The dispute between Asia’s two largest economies escalated after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested earlier this month that Tokyo could intervene militarily if China attacked self-ruled Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its territory.
China’s foreign ministry said President Xi Jinping raised the issue in a phone call with US President Donald Trump on Monday, stressing that Taiwan’s return was “an integral part of the post-war international order.”
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that, following that call, Trump spoke with Takaichi and advised her not to provoke Beijing over the island’s sovereignty, citing unnamed Japanese officials and an American familiar with the exchange.
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary Minoru Kihara, however, rejected the Journal’s account.
“The article has a passage that says, on the question of Taiwan’s sovereignty, (Trump) advised her not to provoke the Chinese government. There is no such fact,” AFP quoted Kihara as saying at a regular media briefing, without elaborating.
In her account of the call with Trump, Takaichi said that the two discussed the US president’s conversation with Xi, as well as bilateral relations.
“President Trump said we are very close friends, and he offered that I should feel free to call him anytime,” she said.
However, according to the WSJ, “the Japanese officials said the message was worrying”.
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View All“The president didn’t want friction over Taiwan to endanger a detente reached last month with Xi, which includes a promise to buy more agricultural products from American farmers hit hard by the trade war,” it reported.
China-Japan tensions
Beijing, which has repeatedly warned it could use force to seize the self-ruled island, reacted angrily to Takaichi’s November 7 remarks in parliament. It summoned Japan’s ambassador and cautioned Chinese citizens against travelling to Japan.
On Wednesday, the Chinese embassy issued another warning, claiming a rise in crime and reporting that some Chinese nationals had “been insulted, beaten and injured for no reason”.
Japan’s foreign ministry rejected the claims, pointing to National Police Agency data showing that the number of murders from January to October had fallen by half compared to the same period in 2024.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun on Thursday reiterated a call for Japan to officially retract Takaichi’s comments.
“The Japanese side’s attempt to downplay, dodge, and cover up Prime Minister Takaichi’s seriously erroneous remarks by not raising them again is self-deception,” AFP quoted Guo as saying at a regular briefing.
“China will never accept this,” Guo added.
With inputs from agencies