Japan Business Delegation Postpones Visit to China Amid Row Over Taiwan

A delegation of three major Japanese business lobbies has postponed its visit to China scheduled for January, amid a diplomatic row following Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's remarks on Taiwan.

The roughly 200-member delegation will not go ahead with its planned four-day trip to Beijing from Jan 20 after failing to secure a clear response to its request for a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the groups said.

Members include Yoshinobu Tsutsui, chairman of the Japanese Business Federation, the country's most powerful business lobby,

Kosei Shindo, head of the Japan-China Economic Association, and Ken Kobayashi, chairman of the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The three groups informed their participants that the trip would be postponed on the grounds they would not "achieve substantial results," with no clear dates for when the trip would be rescheduled.

The postponement comes as Japan and China have been locked in a row since Takaichi's remarks in parliament in November that an attack on Taiwan, which China claims as its territory, could constitute a "survival-threatening situation" for Japan.

The statement was widely interpreted as suggesting possible involvement of the Self-Defense Forces in support of the United States under the nation's right to collective self-defense.

Organized by the Japan-China Economic Association, the Beijing trip of the three business groups had been an almost annual event since fiscal 1975.

While the trip was postponed in September 2012 after the Japanese government's purchase of a significant part of the Senkaku Islands, which China claims, in the East China Sea from a private Japanese owner in that month, the business delegation visited China in March 2013.

When asked about the postponed trip, the Chinese Foreign Ministry's spokesman Lin Jian said at a press conference in Beijing, "We urge the ruling authorities in Japan to...withdraw Prime Minister Takaichi's erroneous remarks in order to create the necessary conditions for normal exchanges between China and Japan."