China’s moves propels Japan to rearm
Japan will get its first aircraft carriers since World War 2 and buy dozens of fighter jets under a new defence plan approved on Tuesday that is intended to counter China’s growing military power.
The new five-year defence plan calls for the upgrade of two existing helicopter carriers so that they can launch fighters, and is the latest in a series of steps under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to boost Japan’s military.
Abe’s government argues the efforts are necessary given growing defence challenges in the region, including tensions with North Korea, and particularly “strong concerns” about the expansion of China’s military footprint.
But the move is controversial, with critics arguing it shifts Tokyo further away from its commitment to strictly defensive capabilities under Japan’s post-World War 2 pacifist constitution.
“We will secure both the quantity and quality of defence capability that is necessary … to meet the rapidly changing security environment,” chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga told a press briefing Tuesday.
The five-year plan approved on Tuesday calls for the defence ministry to upgrade two flat-top Izumo-class destroyers to enable them to launch fighters with short take-off and vertical landing abilities, like the F-35B stealth fighter.
In a separate plan also endorsed by the cabinet on Tuesday, Japan said it would buy 42 F-35s over the next decade, with the F-35B variant widely considered the likeliest candidate.
It also plans over the same period to buy 105 F-35As, a variant of the advanced jet which performs conventional takeoffs and landings and cannot be used on the destroyers.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hua Chunying said Japan’s concerns about Beijing’s military were “not conducive to the development and improvement of Sino-Japanese relations”.
Last year, China unveiled its first domestically built aircraft carrier as it continues to assert its vast claims to the South China Sea. Beijing’s first carrier, the Liaoning, is a second-hand Soviet ship built nearly 30 years ago and commissioned in 2012.
The new plans come after pledges from Japan to buy more US military equipment, under pressure from President Donald Trump, who has complained about Washington’s huge trade deficit with Tokyo, and also urged Abe to expand the country’s defensive capacity.
Abe has campaigned for years to amend Japan’s pacifist constitution, arguing that it ties the hands of the country’s Self-Defence Forces even in protecting the country’s allies from attack.
Government officials were at pains to make clear the policy did not represent a shift away from the country’s long-standing focus on defence.
The remodelled ships and new fighter jets will “increase operational flexibility” for Japan’s military as China boosts its naval footprint in southern waters that are home to several remote Japanese islands, a defence official said.
But he said it was a “misunderstanding” to believe that the upgrades would create “fullfledged aircraft carriers” capable of staging offensive action in distant regions. “That’s not going to happen.”
The remodelled ships and new fighter jets will increase operational flexibility