Monitor | 'Nuclear option' will do more damage to China than Japan
Given the huge surplus China could gain from its trade with Japan, it would have more to lose from a tit-for-tat imposition of sanctions
Monday's edition of the China Daily carried an opinion article by one Jin Baisong calling on Beijing to impose trade sanctions against Japan in retaliation for the perceived slight of Tokyo's purchase of three of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islets from their former private owner.
What's more, Jin went on to suggest that Beijing should punish Tokyo for its presumption by dumping China's reserve holdings of Japanese government debt.
China Daily describes Jin as "deputy director of the department of Chinese trade studies at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, affiliated to the Ministry of Commerce".
In other words, Jin is considered an expert on China's foreign trade. That's troubling because his article betrays a profound ignorance about how trade and financial flows between China and Japan actually work.
In his article, Jin argues that Japan is reliant on China and that "Japan's economy will suffer severely if China were to impose sanctions on it. China's loss would be relatively less".
However, a quick look at figures released last month by the Japan External Trade Organisation shows that over the first half of this year, China actually recorded a bilateral trade surplus with Japan of US$17.6 billion. This figure was no one-off. Last year, China ran a bilateral surplus of US$21.9 billion.