Japan yesterday labelled the military build-up of rival China a global “concern” and said it would strengthen missile defences against the threat from North Korea, as part of a major strategic review.
The changes would also see Tokyo boost its southern forces and submarine fleet and upgrade its fighter jets as part of a shift in its defence focus from the Soviet Cold War threat to southern islands nearer China.
The Cabinet of officially pacifist Japan approved the National Defence Programme Guidelines months after a territorial row flared up with China and weeks after North Korea launched a deadly artillery strike against South Korea.
Beijing called Japan’s stance “irresponsible”.
“No country has the right to appoint themselves the representative of the international community and make irresponsible comments on China’s development,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Jiang Yu said in a statement.
The new guidelines labelled North Korea – which in recent years has fired missiles over Japan, staged two nuclear tests and last month unveiled a new uranium enrichment plant – an “urgent, grave factor for instability”.
Japan, like its top security ally the United States, again voiced concern over China’s recent military build-up and increased assertiveness in what Beijing sees as its ancestral waters in the East China and South China seas.
“China is rapidly modernising its military force and expanding activities in its neighbouring waters,” said the guidelines.
“Together with the lack of transparency on China’s military and security issues, the trend is a concern for the region and the international community,” said the paper, which sets out strategic planning for the coming decade.
Security analyst Akira Kato, a professor at Tokyo’s Oberlin University, said “the guidelines underline Japan’s clear shift of focus to counteracting China’s growing naval power, which is a major threat to Japan and the United States.”
Japan will increase its submarine fleet from 16 to 22 and modernise its fighter jets, but scrap more than 200 tanks and 200 artillery pieces, it said.
It also plans to double from three to six its land-based Patriot Advanced Capability-3 interceptor missile systems, and increase from four to six the number of sea-based Standard Missile-3 interceptors on its Aegis destroyers.
Pledging a more nimble defence capability, it said: “We will build a dynamic defence force backed by sophisticated technologies and intelligence, with readiness, mobility, flexibility, sustainability and multiple disciplines.”
The outlook moves away from the perceived Cold War threat of a Soviet invasion and calls for drawing down troop strength on northern Hokkaido island. Instead it says Japan will boost its ground, air and naval forces on the far-southern Nansei islands that take in Okinawa, a major base for US forces, and are closer to remote flashpoint islands near Taiwan.
The guidelines called the Japan-US alliance “indispensable”.
They also say Japan will enhance security ties with South Korea, Australia, Southeast Asia and India and “promote confidence and cooperation with China and Russia” while also enhancing ties with the European Union and Nato.
The defence guidelines are usually revised every five years but came a year late following Japan’s 2009 power shift in which the centre-left Democratic Party ended a half-century of almost unbroken conservative rule.