Singapore: For more than a week, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has been blasted with a fire hose of Chinese rage over her remarks about a potential Taiwan Strait crisis.

The trigger was Takaichi’s suggestion that Japan could deploy its armed forces if China made a military move against Taiwan, a self-governing democracy that Beijing claims as its own territory.

Beijing’s response was immediate and furious, and has escalated in the days since, with the deepening row devolving into a diplomatic test for Takaichi, a national security hawk, in the opening weeks of her leadership.

It has summoned Japan’s ambassador to lodge a formal protest, suspended the release of at least two new Japanese films in China, and made clear that Foreign Minister Wang Yi will not meet Takaichi when

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