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The story
Following Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s Diet remarks on a possible “Taiwan contingency,” Chinese travelers began widely avoiding trips to Japan, and the number of Chinese tourists visiting Japan reportedly fell by nearly half — wiping out an estimated 521 billion yen in spending. Yet overall inbound tourist spending in Japan actually came in higher than the previous year. On the thread, posters speculated that “Chinese tourists were only using Chinese-owned hotels, shops, and unlicensed cabs, so the money wasn’t really flowing into Japan to begin with,” while others welcomed the change, saying tourist spots have become pleasantly less crowded.
Japan-China relations cooled sharply after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s Diet testimony regarding a possible “Taiwan contingency,” causing the number of travelers from mainland China to Japan to plummet. As the Chinese government urged its citizens to avoid trips to Japan, concerns mounted over serious damage to the tourism industry — with one November 2025 estimate putting the economic losses from the drop in visitors from mainland China and Hong Kong at 1.79 trillion yen.
About nine months later, the actual numbers show that Chinese tourists — who once made up a large share of Japan’s inbound market — have indeed declined. But looking at inbound tourism as a whole, the picture looks quite different from what was originally feared.
■ The Chinese Tourists Who Vanished After PM Takaichi’s “Taiwan Contingency” Remarks
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Broken down by fertilizer type, Japan still relies heavily on specific sources for certain materials, such as sourcing about 72% of its ammonium phosphate from China.
Cheap, that's why. If they ever ban exports, we'll just get it from another country.
(Written in Chinese) Chinese people, don't come to Japan.
Chinese people, don't come to Japan.
Chinese people, don't come to Japan.
Exactly — facing a shrinking consumer base from Japan's low birthrate and aging population, our country chose the path of growing demand from overseas instead (exporting more food, bringing in more foreign tourists). 🌏 Globalization 🤗 Welcome
And on the flip side, /Newsplus posters got to skip the rush-buying before prices go up, thanks to the inflation our government is so happily pushing. 🙆 Safe
I think that means "don't come"?
they're just keeping citizens from leaving because letting them out means money leaves too.
does actively accepting more foreign workers/tourists cut into work for small regional sash (window frame) manufacturers? Could it put them out of business?
That's Abe's achievement at work.
Which makes it anti-Takaichi, then.
Actually it's the opposite — look at Kyoto hotel prices, they've crashed hard, which exposes the "it was all Chinese-capital spending" claim as false.
It's been said a lot that Chinese tourists only visit places run by other Chinese people,
so the money never reaches Japan anyway —
meaning them not coming is actually a net plus for Japan.
It was just Chinese operators jacking up prices to fleece other Chinese tourists, and everyone else got dragged into it.
they don't pay a single yen in tax.
I remember hearing they were using 5-series-plated Alphards (Toyota Alphard minivans).
To begin with, if payments go through Chinese platforms, Japan's National Tax Agency can't trace the money flow,
so even while running an illegal cab service, they're probably still registered as a tax-exempt household in Japan like it's nothing.
Even a white-plated car could just be legit ride-sharing, so we need to actually check whether it's a real unlicensed cab before assuming — otherwise it's just spreading a bad rumor.
Let's be careful!
Shouldn't that reply have gone to Re: #80?
Because the money just flows back to their own country anyway.
The results say otherwise.
If Chinese tourists really weren't spending money here to begin with, overall spending should've jumped by a lot more than it did — something doesn't add up.
There's not much of that "bulk-buying" frenzy either.
How much money was actually just circulating within the Chinese community itself is still anyone's guess.
Does this guy seriously not understand how economics works, saying the money "flows to the Chinese"?
going on about how losing Chinese tourists would cause massive economic losses,
how the tourism industry would be devastated.
Honestly sounded just like Chinese state media.
And this is the actual result.
No apology, of course.
I've never actually seen any media outlet say that.
Sounds like you're making it up.
Everybody was already predicting that overall numbers wouldn't drop even with fewer Chinese tourists, since Japan was already over capacity to begin with.
Japan's legacy media is basically half a Chinese PR bulletin these days.
Background and Key Points
Some background: Japan’s post-pandemic tourism boom has leaned heavily on China, historically its single largest source market by spending, even as inbound arrivals from South Korea, Taiwan, the US and elsewhere have also hit records amid a historically weak yen. PM Sanae Takaichi’s Diet remarks raised the possibility that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could count as a “survival-threatening situation” allowing Japan to exercise collective self-defense — a marked departure from Tokyo’s usual ambiguity on Taiwan, which prompted Beijing to issue a travel advisory and Chinese arrivals to collapse. The 521 billion yen and 1.79 trillion yen figures come from official and industry estimates of lost Chinese-tourist spending, based on Japan Tourism Agency consumption survey data.
The thread’s real disagreement isn’t about whether relations soured — it’s about why national spending didn’t fall to match. One camp insists Chinese tourists’ money never really entered Japan’s economy, since it allegedly flowed through Chinese-owned hotels, shops and unlicensed cabs paid via Chinese apps. Others point out that if that were fully true, overall spending should have risen far more than it did once Chinese visitors vanished, meaning the “closed-loop economy” theory is likely exaggerated, not proven.
What’s likely missed: Japan strictly licenses taxis, so the “unlicensed cabs” posters describe are illegal white-plate operations, not legal ride-share — a legal, not just cultural, issue. Also unmentioned is that Japan’s inbound market was already near overcapacity, meaning other nationalities and a still-weak yen could plausibly absorb the shortfall regardless of any China-specific spending patterns.
※ This article was compiled by excerpting and summarizing the 5channel (Newsplus) thread “‘Halved’ Chinese Tourists Wipe Out 521 Billion Yen — Yet Overall Spending Still Beats Last Year, and Total Visitor Numbers Barely Dropped.”
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