North Korea’s growing missile arsenal might be the most obvious and
immediate military threat facing Japan, but defence planners in Tokyo
are focused on a much larger and more challenging foe as they prepare
for the years ahead.
China has stepped up military spending and already dominates the South
China Sea, through which Japan’s trade with major markets including
Europe and the Middle East flows.
Now, Japanese military experts are worried Beijing may be on the brink
of opening access to the Pacific through a Japanese island chain that
has marked the limit of China’s military influence for decades.
Tokyo sees unfettered passage for Chinese warships and warplanes through
the Okinawan island chain as a threat to vital sea lanes.
For China that access is part and parcel of becoming a global superpower.
“Now, we are evenly matched but the reality Japan faces is that it is
becoming the underdog,” said Nozomu Yoshitomi, a professor at Nihon
University in Tokyo who advised Japan’s government as a Self Defence
Forces military analyst.
In addition to having Asia’s second-largest military, Japan is also
defended by US forces that have used the country as their main Asia base
since the end of World War Two.
Under a security treaty, Washington is obliged to aid Tokyo if its territory is attacked.
China has “essentially established de facto control over the South China
Sea and the East China Sea is next,” said a retired senior US military
commander on condition he wasn’t identified. “The United States, for its
part, has been in relative retreat in the Western Pacific for a
decade.”
Beijing is ramping up military spending to build a world-class fighting
force by 2050 with advanced kit, including stealth jets and, according
to state-run media, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
In 2018, Beijing plans to spend 1.11tn yuan ($175bn) on its armed forces, more than three times as much as Japan.
That would also be around a third of what the United States pays for the
world’s most powerful military, including 30,000 marines in Okinawa and
a navy carrier attack group based near Tokyo.
“The pace of Chinese activity in waters around Japanese territory has
expanded and accelerated,” Japan’s Minister of Defence Itsunori Onodera
said this month. “China is building the capacity to operate in distant
seas and that can be see with China’s acquisition of its first carrier
and its construction of a second flat top.”
China says its military is for defensive purposes and its intentions in the region are peaceful.
China’s Defence Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
Japan’s defence outlays for the past five years have risen by just 1% a year.
It will likely grow at around the same pace over the next five year plan
as health and welfare spending on an ageing population takes priority, a
government defence official said.
“Finance is our weakness, but our strength is the resilience of our
society,” said another defence ministry adviser, who also asked not to
be identified.
If Japan is able to hunker down long enough, he explained, the threat
from China should recede as future internal strife, economic woes or
other events prompt a retreat.
To restrain Beijing in the meantime, Japan needs advanced weaponry and
new munitions able to strike targets further away, said the sources with
knowledge of the plans.
Japan’s defence reviews, which will likely be released in December, may
propose it establish its first joint command headquarters to coordinate
air, ground and naval forces and strengthen co-operation with
Washington, the sources said.
New equipment may include amphibious ships along with aerial drones to
monitor Chinese activity and potentially target missiles in the boost
phase of any launch.
Japan’s military will get new air and ground missiles able to hit shipping and land targets at greater ranges.
It will also place fresh orders for Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 stealth
fighters including vertical take off and landing versions, the sources
said.
The review will lay out plans to train more Ground Self Defence troops
(GSDF) in marine fighting tactics and for their wider deployment to
Okinawa.
The GSDF’s unit there will grow to division strength from a battalion, said former defence minister Gen Nakatani.
Yet as Tokyo formulates those plans, Beijing is already testing Japanese defences.
In a manoeuvre in January that Japan protested as a “serious
escalation”, a Chinese submarine entered waters contiguous to disputed
islands in the East China Sea claimed as the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu
in China.
That followed a series of longer range sorties by People’s Liberation Army Air Force bombers and fighters.
China can “test the readiness and response of Japanese forces, to better
understand Japanese defences, and, over time, to engage in peacetime
attrition,” said Toshi Yoshihara, a professor and Senior Fellow at the
Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. “If
Chinese operations become routine, they force Japan to accept the PLA’s
growing presence as a fact of life.”
Tokyo was especially alarmed in November when six Xian H-6 bombers flew
through a 290km (180 mile) gap in Japan’s island chain between Okinawa
and Miyakojima, accompanied by an electronic warfare TU-154 and a Y-8
monitoring plane.
One senior defence official said the exercise “looked like a practice strike package on Guam”, another major US military base.
China’s Defence Ministry did not respond to request for comment on the exercise.
“The pace of Chinese activity is faster than we anticipated,” Nakatani
said at his Tokyo office, where an arrow scribbled on a map of Japan on
the wall highlighted the breach in the island chain. “Japan’s security
environment has not been this harsh since World War Two.” – Reuters
China has stepped up military spending and already dominates the South China Sea.