China’s recent pressure campaign against Japan has involved critical minerals, tourism, seafood and even pandas. Now Beijing is taking the dispute to the cultural sphere, targeting a Japanese television drama.
The Chinese government has in recent days focused its ire on “Vivant,” one of Japan’s most popular shows, a cross between “24” and “Homeland” that tells the story of Japanese spies working to protect their country from threats overseas.
Beijing says the show, which features a fictional Chinese intelligence agency called “Xinxi” as the antagonist, promotes negative views of China. The second season of “Vivant,” which premiered in July, includes scenes of Chinese agents torturing Japanese operatives. In the first season, the enemy state was not identified.
“This television series once again reveals that there is a force in Japan that attempts to use cultural products to smear China and spread anti-China sentiment,” a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, Guo Jiakun, said at a news conference in Beijing on Thursday.
China’s criticism of “Vivant” comes amid a broader effort to penalize Japan for comments made last year by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. She suggested that Japan could intervene militarily if China were to attack Taiwan, a self-governed democracy that Beijing claims is part of its territory.
The outcry over “Vivant” began on Sunday, when China Central Television, the state broadcaster, condemned the series in a social media post.
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Extracted and lightly reformatted for readability. · Source: pt