NPR.

This is the indicator from planet Mare. I'm Daryam Woods.

And today we have NPR's international correspondent Emily Fang on with us.

Hey Emily.

Always the pleasure.

Glad to be with you, Daryon.

And what do we have today?

I have a story for you about boycotts.

And this particular one started with China being very mad at Japan.

These two countries have been in a bit of a diplomatic chill.

And the Chinese state, as a result, has been shaping what people can and cannot buy from Japan.

We usually think about boycotts as these bottom-up ground swells of public anger.

But for today's episode, I want to look at how a state can organize a boycott, whether they work,

and what the purpose of a boycott even is.

This spat between China and Japan all started with these remarks from Japan's new Prime Minister,

Asanae Takeichi, in early November.

She's addressing Japan's parliament, and she says,

if China deploys warships with the use of military force against Taiwan,

that that could lead to a survival-threatening situation for Japan,

which, Darien, to me, that sounds pretty mundane.

But technically, her comments implied if China invaded Taiwan, this Democratic island that China wants to control one day, that if that happened, Japan would get involved militarily.

Beijing freaks out over these sentences. It orders officials to pressure her to retract her statement, threatening consequences.

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