Japan will undertake a major military upgrade to deter a war involving China, an overhaul that could include weapons capable of striking the communist regime.
“I myself have a strong sense of urgency that Ukraine today, maybe East Asia tomorrow,” Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told a security conference in Singapore. “We must be prepared for the emergence of an entity that tramples on the peace and security of other countries by force or threat without honoring the rules.”
Kishida did not mention China by name, but his calculation was clear. The Russian attack on Ukraine set a precedent, in his telling, that could foreshadow a conflict in Indo-Pacific regions where Beijing has made unilateral sovereignty claims.
“In the South China Sea, are the rules really being honored?” he said, before citing the unheeded international ruling that condemned China’s assertion of sovereignty over the vast waterways. “In the East China Sea, where Japan is located, unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force in violation of international law are continuing. Japan is taking a firm stand against such attempts. Peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, which is located between these two seas, is also of extreme importance.”
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A senior Chinese military official responded by warning that Japan must “suffer sooner or later” for its posture regarding Taiwan, according to the South China Morning Post, and rejected Kishida’s complaints about their policies in the waters of the South China Sea and the East China Sea near Japan.
“China doesn’t accept the accusation that it’s using its capabilities and force to change the status quo in the area,” People’s Liberation Army Lt. Gen. He Lei said after Kishida’s speech.
Security tensions in the Indo-Pacific have been overshadowed in the public eye by the war in Ukraine, but they are taking center stage in Singapore this weekend during the International Institute for Strategic Studies Shangri-La Dialogue. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Wei Fenghe met Friday on the sidelines of the conference, an in-person encounter that featured a tense exchange about the status of Taiwan, the island democracy that Chinese officials regard as their sovereign territory, even though they have never ruled there.
”If anyone dares to split Taiwan from China, the Chinese army will definitely not hesitate to start a war no matter the cost,” Wei told Austin, according to Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Wu Qian. “It is not the mainland that is changing the status quo. It is Taiwan independence forces … and outside forces that are trying to change the status quo.”
President Joe Biden has said that the United States would defend Taiwan against a prospective Chinese invasion, although his administration has affirmed that the U.S. does not support recognition of Taiwan as an independent country and tried to maintain a policy of ambiguity about whether U.S. forces would intervene.
“As a leading democracy and a technological powerhouse, Taiwan is a key U.S. partner in the Indo-Pacific,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s team emphasized in a recent update to the State Department overview of U.S.-Taiwan relations. “Consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act, the United States makes available defense articles and services as necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability — and maintains our capacity to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of Taiwan.”
Kishida emphasized that Biden, during his visit to Tokyo last month, “strongly supported” his military proposals.
“I am determined to fundamentally reinforce Japan’s defense capabilities within the next five years and secure substantial increase of Japan’s defense budget needed to effect it,” he said. “In doing so, we will not rule out any options, including so-called ‘counterstrike capabilities,’ and will realistically consider what is necessary to protect the lives and livelihoods of our people.”
That term refers to the ability for Japan to strike bases in China if the People’s Liberation Army initiates a conflict. Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who remains a powerful figure in the Japanese legislature, has said that “a Taiwan emergency is a Japanese emergency, and therefore an emergency for the Japan-U.S. alliance.” That assessment reflects Taiwan’s strategic location in the so-called first island chain, a string of islands that link Japan to other U.S. allies in the region, and perhaps the fact that a Chinese attack there would also bring Beijing’s forces into closer proximity to islands that feature in territorial disputes between China and Japan.
Japan maintained only very modest military capabilities in the decades after its disarmament at the end of the Second World War. Japanese forces gradually have acquired advanced weapons systems from the U.S., as the apparent alignment of China and Russia has deepened Washington’s need for high-powered allies in the Indo-Pacific, a role that Japan, “the world’s third-largest economy,” as Kishida noted, has the financial resources to play.
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“We will be more proactive than ever in tackling the challenges and crises that face Japan, Asia, and the world,” the prime minister said. “Taking that perspective, in order to maintain and strengthen the peaceful order in this region, I will advance the ‘Kishida Vision for Peace’ and boost Japan’s diplomatic and security role in the region by promoting the following five pillars of initiatives.”
