Saturday, September 25, 2004

New York Times: Japan set to label China as war threat

Japan set to label China as war threat
James Brooke
NYT ~~article_owner~~ Wednesday,
September 15, 2004
Koizumi advisers reportedly urging a shift in strategy

TOKYO Reflecting growing wariness between the two giants of Asia, an advisory panel to Japan's prime minister will recommend that China be viewed as a potential military threat for the first time, a newspaper here reported Wednesday.

Since the end of World War II, Japan has regarded its main military threat as coming from the north, Russia, and from the west, North Korea. But now, according to the report in Japan's leading business newspaper, Nihon Keizai, the 10-member advisory panel to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will recommend that China, its neighbor to the southwest, be regarded as a potential military threat.

Although China has about 10 times the population of Japan, its traditional dominance of Asia was in remission during the 20th century as it was hobbled first by civil war and Japanese military rule, then by half a century of communist economic policies.

With the recent market-oriented economic boom, China's economy is expected to surpass that of Japan in 15 years. Already it is investing heavily in military spending.

“While the Russian military capability in the Far East has dropped dramatically in the last 15 years, conversely, China has gone on a big spending boom,” Lance Gatling, an American aerospace and defense consultant, said in an interview Wednesday. “They are looking at a deep-water navy, more offensive weapons, reconnaissance satellites.“The panel will not call it directly a military threat, but the concern about a conflict between Taiwan and China is quite real, and Japan is concerned about getting drawn into that.”

Japanese and American officials have held discussions this week about the possibility of permitting U.S. and Japanese military flights to an island with a civilian landing strip that is almost halfway between Okinawa and Taiwan. According to a Washington-based defense expert visiting Tokyo, Japan is considering the request, along with a proposal to build a port on the island, Shimoji Shima, that would be able to berth Japanese ships equipped with antimissile batteries. In recent years, Japan has used the missile and nuclear program of North Korea as public justification for its growing partnership with the United States in developing a missile defense. This has allowed Japanese military planners to avoid talking about China, one of the world's five major nuclear powers.

Japanese officials hope to avoid getting drawn into any conflict between China and Taiwan, a former Japanese colony that Beijing regards as a breakaway province. However, the East China Sea is seeing a rise in direct tensions between China and Japan.Boatloads of Chinese nationalist groups, allegedly privately financed, have tried to land this year on the Senkakus, about 160 kilometers, or 100 miles, northwest of Shimoji Shima. This uninhabited archipelago is claimed by both nations.

In addition, China has started laying a gas line across the seabed toward an area that Japan claims as its exclusive economic zone. While the Chinese drill for gas, a Japanese survey boat is conducting its own research.

“Since China is deploying military vessels, there are people saying this is a matter for our Self-Defense Forces, and I am really worried,” Yukio Okamoto, a former prime ministerial aide for Okinawa, said in an interview, referring to the Japanese armed forces.

While military tensions appear to be on the rise, booming trade with China is credited with pushing much of Japan's current economic recovery.

With Toyota recently announcing a $500 million investment in China, China is expected to displace the United States this year as Japan's top trading partner.

However, this economic bonanza could be threatened by widespread anti-Japanese sentiment in China and by Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni, a Shinto shrine to Japan's war dead.

“Toyota is worried about a Chinese boycott,” an aide to Koizumi said Wednesday. Referring to heavy pressure by Japanese businesses on Koizumi to improve relations with China, he said: “Japan is starting to lose contracts.”

The New York Times

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