Nobody should have been surprised that Tokyo plans to deploy medium-range surface-to-air missiles on Yonaguni Island, 110km off Taiwan’s east coast. The decision was first announced in January.
The surprise was the timing of confirmation, by Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi on Sunday, that the deployment was “steadily moving forward.” It came in the middle of heightened tensions between China and Japan over Tokyo’s military posture, and remarks made by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on Nov. 7 on the potential use of its Self-Defense Forces in the event of an attack on Taiwan by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Not only has Takaichi refused to retract her comments, but Koizumi’s confirmation shows that Tokyo has no intention of backing down on its right to self-defense.
Referring to Takaichi’s remarks, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) on Sunday wrote that “if Japan persists ... all countries ... have the right to re-examine Japan’s historical crimes and ... to resolutely prevent the resurgence of Japanese militarism.”
He added that “China must resolutely respond ... to defend the post-war achievements won with blood and lives.”
It seems ironic, despite China’s militarization of the South China Sea and aggressive actions in the Taiwan Strait, that Wang would accuse Japan — a country that has remained peaceful for eight decades, is widely regarded as a regional stabilizing force and is now only preparing to defend itself in a potential worst-case scenario — of being the aggressive, militaristic actor threatening regional peace.
That he did so should come as no surprise. This is just Beijing conjuring up controversy to further its strategy of clearing obstacles to regional dominance.
Wang is bolstering a narrative the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been forming ever since Japan started talking about increasing its military budget under former Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida.
Kishida was following on from a policy trajectory of his predecessor, former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, and which is now enthusiastically being taken up by Takaichi. This chain of events was only deemed necessary because of the CCP’s increasingly apparent militaristic ambition.
The CCP’s relitigation of wartime atrocities and past Japanese militarism is part of a strategy to consolidate divisions, with the US and Japan on one side, and China, Russia and ASEAN on the other.
The strategy surfaced during a speech by Chinese Minister of National Defense Dong Jun (董軍) at the Shangri-La Dialogue defense forum in Singapore on June 2 last year. Dong had tried to persuade the attendees that the US should withdraw from the region and that ASEAN should play a more central role. The message to the US is that it is not welcome; to Japan that it should do as it is told; to ASEAN that it can trust China.
He tried to convince the audience that the CCP and the PLA stand for peace and dialogue, even as he warned Manila that there is a “limit to our restraint” over its pushback against Beijing’s aggression in the South China Sea, and Taiwan’s elected leadership that it would be “nailed to the flaying post of history” if it persisted with upholding the nation’s sovereign, independent status.
China could say that its behavior in the South China Sea, its island building and its insistence on annexing Taiwan are all legitimate moves in its pursuit of national defense, but when Japan signals its intention to defend itself, Beijing raises the alarm of resurgent militarism and leverages the message to create division.
There was one surprise: Hours after US President Donald Trump spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Tuesday, Trump called Takaichi. Presumably, he did not upbraid her for persisting with Japan’s militaristic ways.
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