Japan downgraded its rating of China on Friday for the first time in a decade, marking a new blow to relations between the Asian superpowers.
Japan’s ties with Beijing have soured in recent months after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi hinted in November that Tokyo could intervene militarily in any attack on self-ruled Taiwan.
China sees the island as its territory and has not ruled out taking it by force.
The Japanese Foreign Ministry’s Bluebook – which details Tokyo’s official views on diplomacy and the international climate – had described China as “one of Japan’s most important partners” since 2016.
But this year’s edition simply calls China “an important neighbor.”
The report accused Beijing of “stepping up its one-sided criticism and intimidation measures against Japan.”
As the diplomatic row deepened between the world’s second- and fourth-largest economies, Beijing urged its citizens not to travel to Japan and tightened trade restrictions on some Japanese firms.
Chinese visitors to the archipelago fell 45.2 percent in February from a year earlier, official data showed last month.
Beyond China, Japan’s diplomatic book painted a bleak picture of the international landscape as a whole.
“It can be said that the relatively peaceful era once known as the ‘post-Cold War’ period is now over,” he said.
