Japan pivots to face China
TOKYO, Nov 27, (RTRS): China’s growing maritime power has emerged as the biggest challenge to the Japanese military since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Tokyo this year halted a decade of declining military outlays with an 0.8 per cent increase to 4.9 trillion yen ($48 billion)
Defence outlays next year are expected to increase more sharply by about 3 per cent according to senior Japanese military officials. Japanese military analysts believe their navy still holds a clear advantage in technology and firepower over its Chinese rival but the gap is closing.
“The Japanese Maritime Self Defence Force is the second-largest and second-most capable navy next to the US navy,” says retired Admiral Yoji Koda. “The Chinese navy is very much afraid of the Japanese navy’s real capability. ” Koda and other security experts estimate that it will take China about 15 years to match the Japanese and US naval power in East Asia if Beijing can maintain its double digit annual increases in military spending.
Increased
China this year increased its defence budget by 10.7 per cent to $119 billion but some foreign experts estimate Beijing’s real spending could be as high as $200 billion.
As Tokyo increases military outlays, it is also repositioning and reequipping its military. Throughout the Cold War, the Japanese Self Defence Force concentrated the bulk of its firepower in its northern islands, ready to confront the Soviet Union and assist the US navy in monitoring the powerful Russian submarine fleet.
Now Tokyo is in the early stages of redeploying its forces to the west to counter the sharply increased tempo of Chinese naval operations. And, in a sign that it is determined to counter any threat to far flung islands, including the Senkaku/Diaoyu group. The Japanese military is planning to introduce an amphibious landing force, akin to the US marines, that could be deployed to defend outlying islands or landed to recover territory captured by a foreign invader. Powerful The first 700 members of the 3,000-strong force will be drawn from the army, according to the Japanese Defence Ministry. Japan already has a powerful fleet of helicopter carriers and amphibious landing ships that could support this type of operation. And, it is testing some new amphibious assault vehicles needed to land troops.
Recent exercises also suggest Tokyo’s defence planners are preoccupied with threats to outlying islands. Just as China’s latest major exercise around the Japanese archipelago drew to a close, Japan launched an 18-day exercise involving 34,000 troops that included an amphibious landing on an uninhabited atoll south of Okinawa. Earlier this year, 1,000 Japanese troops took part in a joint amphibious landing exercise in California with US Marines.
Also: MANILA: The Philippines said on Wednesday the imminent arrival of China’s sole aircraft carrier in the disputed South China Sea for the first time for a training mission would raise tension.
The carrier Liaoning left port from the northern city of Qingdao accompanied by two destroyers and two frigates on Tuesday. While in the South China Sea, it will carry out tests and drills, according to China’s military. China says the mission is routine. China claims almost the entire oil- and gas-rich South China Sea, rejecting the rival claims to parts of it from Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Vietnam.
Philippine Foreign Affairs Department spokesman Raul Hernandez said the carrier’s arrival was a worrying development that contravened agreements with China on managing tension in the South China Sea.
“Its deployment raises tension and violates the Declaration of the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea,” he said.
“Its deployment must not be violative of international law, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea,” Hernandez added.
China and the Philippines have accused each other of violating the code of conduct, a non-binding confidence-building agreement on maritime conduct signed by China and ASEAN in 2002.