China cautions India-Japan ties against targeting third parties
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- Guo Jiakun, China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson, told reporters that bilateral cooperation should not target any third party or be used as 'an excuse to patch up exclusive small groupings and stoke division and confrontation,' responding to India-Japan partnership announcements.
- India and Japan unveiled multiple landmark initiatives on July 2, 2026, including an economic partnership framework, a defence pact to co-develop military hardware, and steps to enhance energy ties to tackle oil shocks.
- PM Modi and Japanese PM Sanae Takaichi expressed 'serious concern' at the situation in the East China Sea and South China Sea, opposing unilateral actions that endanger freedom of navigation and attempts to change the status quo by force, per a joint statement.
- China-Japan relations have deteriorated to their lowest level in years after Takaichi's November 2025 remarks that Japan could respond if China attacked Taiwan, prompting China to tighten rare earth mineral exports to Japan, the U.S. and India as trade leverage.
- China accounts for about 70% of global rare earth mining and nearly 90% of processing — minerals critical for electronics, automobiles, wind energy and defence equipment — giving Beijing direct commercial leverage over the critical minerals cooperation the India-Japan partnership seeks to build.
Why it matters: China's diplomatic rebuke lands on a partnership that now includes co-developed defence hardware and a new economic framework — concrete moves well beyond routine diplomacy. The Beijing-controlled rare earth supply (~90% of processing) was already tightened against Japan, and India is now the second key node in a network explicitly designed to reduce dependency on Chinese critical minerals.
