Tokyo must boost its military at a “radically different pace” than in the past to counter Beijing’s growing capacity, Japan’s defense minister said in an interview published yesterday.
Japanese Minister of Defense Nobuo Kishi said that the gap between the Japanese military and the Chinese military was “growing by the year,” in an interview with the Nikkei daily.
“We must increase our defense capabilities at a radically different pace than in the past,” he said, citing China’s military spending as well as new areas of warfare such as space, cyber and electromagnetic warfare.
Photo: AFP
Japan’s defense spending has tended to hover at about one percent of GDP, but Kishi said that spending would be guided by needs rather than caps.
“The security environment surrounding Japan is changing rapidly with heightened uncertainty,” the Nikkei quoted him as saying. “We will properly allocate the funding we need to protect our nation.”
Japan’s post-war constitution limits the scope of its military to defensive power, and efforts to boost capacity have sometimes been controversial domestically.
Kishi’s comments come with Japan increasingly concerned about the regional security environment and particularly China’s growing assertiveness.
The military balance between Japan and China has “leaned heavily toward China in recent years, and the gap has been growing by the year,” he told the paper.
Kishi also said that Japan considers issues related to Taiwan “as our own problem,” as China increases pressure on Taipei.
Japan has been more vocal in the past few months about Chinese moves in regional waters, and particularly the presence of coastguard ships around disputed islands in the East China Sea.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to start construction of its 1.4-nanometer chip manufacturing facilities at the Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP, 中部科學園區) as early as October, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported yesterday, citing the park administration. TSMC acquired land for the second phase of the park’s expansion in Taichung in June. Large cement, construction and facility engineering companies in central Taiwan have reportedly been receiving bids for TSMC-related projects, the report said. Supply-chain firms estimated that the business opportunities for engineering, equipment and materials supply, and back-end packaging and testing could reach as high as
CHAMPIONS: President Lai congratulated the players’ outstanding performance, cheering them for marking a new milestone in the nation’s baseball history Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought. “It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game. Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games. “There is
Democratic nations should refrain from attending China’s upcoming large-scale military parade, which Beijing could use to sow discord among democracies, Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Shen You-chung (沈有忠) said. China is scheduled to stage the parade on Wednesday next week to mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. The event is expected to mobilize tens of thousands of participants and prominently showcase China’s military hardware. Speaking at a symposium in Taichung on Thursday, Shen said that Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) recently met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a visit to New Delhi.
FINANCES: The KMT plan to halt pension cuts could bankrupt the pension fund years earlier, undermining intergenerational fairness, a Ministry of Civil Service report said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus’ proposal to amend the law to halt pension cuts for civil servants, teachers and military personnel could accelerate the depletion of the Public Service Pension Fund by four to five years, a Ministry of Civil Service report said. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) on Aug. 14 said that the Act Governing Civil Servants’ Retirement, Discharge and Pensions (公務人員退休資遣撫卹法) should be amended, adding that changes could begin as soon as after Saturday’s recall and referendum. In a written report to the Legislative Yuan, the ministry said that the fund already faces a severe imbalance between revenue
RSS