Japan is to establish new military outposts on remote islands, a report said yesterday, as Tokyo looks to bolster its defense amid its territorial dispute with China.
Up to 350 troops each could be stationed on three islands in the far southwest, close to the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), claimed by Taiwan, which Japan claims and calls the Senkakus and Beijing claims as the Diaoyu Archipelago (釣魚群島), the mass-selling Yomiuri Shimbun reported.
With the exception of Okinawa, Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Forces — its army — have no bases on the chain of islands that runs from the bottom of Kyushu to Taiwan. There are limited air force facilities in the area.
The lack of substantial military presence is a source of worry for some in Japan, who caution that it leaves Japan vulnerable to China’s increasingly assertive stance.
Chinese ships have repeatedly moved into the islands’ waters, since Tokyo nationalized some of them in September 2012, to confront Japanese vessels.
The islands lie about 2,000km southwest of Tokyo and about 200km from the north of Taiwan.
While most of the bickering has been between coastguards from both sides, observers say military ships are loitering over the horizon, with some warning of the risk of a confrontation.
Beijing has spent heavily on its military in recent years in a bid to develop a “blue water” navy that can project force far into the Pacific.
This means getting through what it calls the “first island chain,” including Japan’s southwestern islands and the northern Philippines.
Tokyo is planning to set up new outposts on three islands, including Amamioshima, about 150km south of the Senkakus, the Yomiuri said, citing unnamed senior Japanese Ministry of Defense officials.
Japanese Deputy Minister of Defense Ryota Takeda is to visit Amamioshima this week to look at establishing a joint research project with the island, it said.
Two other candidate sites for the new posts include Miyako Island and Ishigaki Island, about 210km southwest and 170km south respectively of the disputed islets.
These units are to be in addition to a radar surveillance unit on Yonaguni, where a groundbreaking ceremony was held last month.
Bolstering the defense of Japan’s southwestern islands “has an aspect of strengthening the Japan-US security alliance,” a senior defense official told the Yomiuri.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said under a new defense program, Japan had already decided to enhance its military presence in the southwest and had been conducting research.
“At the moment, however, we have not decided on specific, concrete locations, such as those reported,” he told a press conference.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS