TAIPEI (Reuters) -Taiwan President Lai Ching-te showed his support for Japan on Thursday with a lunch of Japanese-sourced sushi, after China indicated it would ban all imports of the country’s seafood in an escalating dispute over the Chinese-claimed island.
Tensions between the two countries ignited after new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said this month that a Chinese attack on Taiwan threatening Japan’s survival could trigger a military response.
Lai, in pictures on his social media feeds, showed himself eating a sushi lunch of yellowtail from Japan’s Kagoshima and scallops from Hokkaido.
“Today’s lunch is sushi and miso soup,” he wrote on his Facebook and Instagram feeds, and used the same wording in Japanese on his X account.
Taiwan’s government, which rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims, has in recent years been subject to similar food export bans by China, including of Taiwanese pineapples and fish, in what Taipei has said is part of a Chinese pressure campaign.
Speaking to reporters at parliament earlier on Thursday, Taiwan Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung said China’s use of economic coercion and military intimidation to “bully other nations are already too numerous to mention individually”.
“At this critical juncture, we must also support Japan in effectively stabilising the situation and halting the Chinese communists’ bullying behaviour.”
Japan and Taiwan have a close though unofficial relationship and deep cultural and business ties. Japan ruled Taiwan from 1895 until the end of World War Two in 1945.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Saad Sayeed)
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