Attacks on Japanese citizens in China stir security concerns

Some of the products that Ken Kato sells though his funerary business come from China, while others have components that originate in China. But the Tokyo-based company owner has no intention of traveling there to meet his partners. It is, he said, simply too dangerous for a Japanese person.

"This is a small company, but when you are in business in Japan it is important to sometimes make the effort to meet partners face-to-face," Kato told DW. "I'm happy to do that if they can come to Japan, but I'm not going to China and I won't ask any of my staff to go either. It is not worth the risk."

Japanese have become increasingly reluctant to visit China after a series of incidents that have made the headlines here, paired with a gradual downward spiral in diplomatic relations between Tokyo and Beijing.

A Japanese employee of major drug manufacturer Astellas Pharma Inc. was detained in Beijing in March 2023 and only indicted on charges of espionage in August of this year. The man's company and the Japanese government have strongly protested his arrest, insisting he is not a spy.

Second attack in three months

On June 24, a Chinese man attacked a Japanese woman and her 3-year-old son with a knife as they waited to take a bus to the boy's Japanese school in the city of Suzhou, northwest of Shanghai. The woman and boy sustained minor injuries but the bus attendant, a Chinese woman named Hu Youping, was killed as she tried to intervene.

Less than three months later, a Japanese boy of 10 on his way to school was fatally attacked by a Chinese man with a knife in the city of Shenzhen, triggering another outpouring of anger in Japan.

In response, Japanese companies have contacted their expatriate staff with offers to bring them home, and the embassy in Beijing and local consulates have advised Japanese nationals to take additional precautions to remain safe. Meanwhile, Tokyo has pressed Beijing to act.

Japan's foreign minister at the time, Yoko Kamikawa, met with Wang Yi, her Chinese counterpart, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York on September 23, five days after the boy was killed, and demanded that China explain the assailant's motives and ensure that no more Japanese are targeted.

To many Japanese, the Chinese response has been inadequate. Chinese officials have said the matter would be investigated appropriately but insisted Japan should not "politicize" the incident.

In a separate incident in June, four American academics were seriously injured while visiting a park in Jilin City. But officials in China have insisted that the attacks are "isolated."

Media reports in Japan have pointed out that the killing of the boy fell on the 93rd anniversary of the 1931 Manchurian Incident, a false-flag attack staged by the Imperial Japanese Army in Manchuria that was used as a pretext by Japan to invade and annex the broader region.

Critics have said China promotes distrust and dislike of Japan through the schoolbooks studied by all of its children. They also claim there is constant anti-Japanese messaging in the media.

Is Beijing promoting anti-Japanese propaganda?

And as education and the media are tightly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, some analysts see attacks on the Japanese people as a direct result of Beijing promoting an anti-Japanese narrative.

"It is clear that young Chinese are being taught a very anti-Japanese message in school and that has become even more obvious in recent years," said Toshimitsu Shigemura, a professor of politics and international relations at Tokyo's Waseda University.

"It was not always so aggressive and, in the past, some Chinese leaders called for closer ties with Japan instead of the rivalry that we see now," he said.

Under Chinese leader Xi Jinping, however, this sort of criticism is "being used to reinforce his own control over Chinese society at a time when it is facing some challenges, including economic problems and high unemployment, especially among the younger generations," Shigemura told DW.    

The media coverage of the attacks has also made some Japanese reconsider their plans to vacation in China.

Ami Yamada, promotions manager for the Tokyo office of the China National Tourism Office, said she is hoping inbound tourist numbers will soon recover to pre-pandemic levels.

"We are working hard to change any negative image of China and we very often find that people who have been once want to go again," she told DW.

However, she also acknowledged that her job had gotten more difficult since reports surfaced of the killing of the boy in Shenzhen and other violent incidents.

Some people have accused the Japanese government of not doing enough to protect Japanese nationals in China, with Hitoshi Matsubara, a member of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, submitting a question to the Japanese parliament on October 4 asking why more strident warnings are not being made about traveling to China.

Threat level at zero

Matsubara pointed out that the Japanese government's threat warning for China is at zero, while the US State Department has set its warning at three on the four-level scale and is warning Americans to avoid traveling to the country. Both New Zealand and Australia have their settings at level two.

Tokyo businessman Kato believes that a growing anti-Japanese feeling in China will, over the longer term, hurt China as fewer foreigners will want to live there and that risk-averse companies will increasingly move their operations to other countries in Southeast Asia.

"The government there is harming its own interests, but the most shocking thing to many Japanese is that they could stop this at any time," he said. "It is their education system and mass media that is making the Chinese people so hostile to Japan, while it is well-known that the government has the ability to shut down social media when it is critical of official state policies," Kato added.

"If they really wanted to stop all the terrible social media exchanges about Japan and the Japanese, then they could. But the fact that they don't do it tells us that the Chinese government is encouraging this aggression and hatred."

Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru