China vows to use nuclear weapons on Japan if they deploy troops to Taiwan.

 

A clip from the Chinese video via Yahoo News.

A Chinese official has vowed China will use nuclear weapons first on Japan if they deploy troops to Taiwan. Yahoo News. A video was made by a military history channel on YouTube and made a stir when it was first released, but the outrage has grown after an official Chinese government account reposted the video. The video threatens a first use policy for nuclear weapons if Japan tries to send troops or assistance to Taiwan. China has long had a no first use policy and refused to use nuclear weapons on countries that do not have nuclear weapons. Though it is unclear if the video represents official Chinese policy it does come at a time of high tensions between Japan and China. 

#CCP Vows to Nuke #Japan if Japan defends #Taiwan. As Japan is the only country that has been nuked, so nuking Japan "will get twice the result with half the effort."
中共軍事頻道威脅對日本實施連續核打擊，直到日本第二次無條件投降。 pic.twitter.com/dp45R2LXtD

— Jennifer Zeng 曾錚 (@jenniferatntd) July 13, 2021

My Comment:

This story broke awhile ago but became a bigger deal when an official Chinese account reposted the video on Twitter. The account was a city account, and has since been deleted, so I doubt this is official Chinese policy. But I think the damage has been done. 

Japan will take the video very seriously because they have to. They have a unique relationship with nuclear weapons and understand the threat better than most countries. Indeed, the video itself cited Japan's history with nuclear weapons as a reason to make the threat. 

It makes me wonder if Japan might want to develop nuclear weapons of their own. They are against that for obvious reasons but do they even have a choice? Without nukes they don't have a way to deter China from nuking them in any war. 

If China were to nuke Japan I think it would result in America (and possibly some other foreign powers like India, the UK and France) using nuclear weapons from China. Indeed, that would be the best scenario because China would use up a large amount of nukes targeting Japan. That would limit retaliatory fire and the damage a nuclear war would do to those countries. Japan would still be utterly screwed but so would China

I do think that China has reason to dislike Japan. Japan had a long history of genocides and other atrocities in China and I don't think the country would care all that much if Japan got destroyed. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if Japan's destruction was a long term goal. 

But is this incident serious? I think it's not going to help things. Given it was from a minor, but official, Twitter account this counts as a fairly major diplomatic insult. That might result in major changes in Japanese policy even if China isn't really threatening nuclear war.