Indian social media watchers will find something disturbingly familiar about the flood of memes, cartoons, taunts and trolling targeting Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. The same was directed at India in the wake of the Galawn clash in June 2020.

Takaichi’s fault was calling for stronger Japanese involvement in cross-strait security, meaning Taiwan’s security, and for China that was unacceptable. At the diplomatic level, Tokyo’s ambassador Beijing was summoned to receive a foreign ministry roasting including a warning against “egregious interference” in its internal affairs.

But the real action was on social media where China’s state machinery turned on the digital propaganda machine: along with insults, taunts and mocking memes, a cartoon showing Takaichi in World War II Japanes

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