China-Japan Ties Worsen

Japan-China ties worsen

China has consistently been raising its military expenditure by 10 percent or so every year for almost a quarter century. It is now planning to build its own aircraft carrier and has been continuously upgrading its fighter planes and submarines. China has been beefing up its military muscle with an eye not just on India and Japan, but also the United States. A demonstration came in December when it tested and deployed the world’s first weapon system that can target a moving carrier strike group from land-based, long-range mobile launchers. This is aimed at US and Japanese navies.

The Chinese attract a lot of negative attention ever since a Chinese trawler collided with two Japan coast guard vessels near the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea in September. The Chinese resorted to highly-aggressive diplomacy when the Japanese impounded the Chinese trawler and arrested the crew members. Japan meekly surrendered to the Chinese threats of “dire consequences” if the crew and the trawler were not released forthwith. Even after their release, China continued to up its ante and demanded an apology. Japan did not oblige, prompting China to take its gunboat diplomacy to a higher level. A month later, Chinese aircraft have routinely been harassing Japanese self-defence force aircraft over the East China Sea.

The Chinese behaviour has raised tension in the region. The air force has ordered its fighter aircraft to scramble every time the Chinese resort to provocative air activities. By December 22, the Japanese had launched scrambles 44 times, the highest in past five years. An indication to what triggered the change in China’s policy came in a report in a Chinese military organ that China does not “consider its EEZ (economic exclusive zone) to be part of international waters.” This means China is set to flex its military muscle to keep foreign military personnel (Japan and the US) out of Chinese EEZ.

The inevitable happened. The Japanese government announced on December 17 its national defence programme guidelines in response to China’s increased defence spending. These refer to Chinese pro-active naval activities as a "matter of concern for the region and the international community," and aim to fortify the defences of the Nansei Islands -- Okinawa Prefecture and Kagoshima Prefecture, which witnessed unusual Chinese military activities in 2010. The development marks a paradigm shift in Japan’s defence policy: Japan will deploy F-15 fighter jets to an SDF base in Okinawa Prefecture and permanently station ground self-defence force troops to the hitherto defenceless southernmost island, a thing no Japanese government dared to do for fear of China’s wrath.

China is to blame for triggering an expensive arms race by its dangerous brinkmanship that has woken up a technologically superior power like Japan. China is following in the footsteps of the Soviet Union, which diverted huge parts of its GDP to imaginary defence needs at the cost of raising the gross happiness product of its citizens. With its needlessly aggressive diplomacy, China has forced Japan to reverse its 65-year-old policy of self-defence and embark on a new concept of “dynamic defence capabilities” as formulated by the new national defence programme guidelines. It is now only a matter of time when Japan will take three more steps that will bug China no end: formation of a national security council to form comprehensive security policies; lifting its self-imposed ban on arms exports and participation in international joint weaponry production; and increasing its defence cooperation with like-minded China-wary regional powers and seek newer allies other than the US.

Since 1945, Japan had been maintaining only minimum defence capabilities. Now, Japan will "increase the activity" of its defence hardware and "clearly demonstrate" its advanced capabilities. The guidelines lay out three objectives: prevention of external threats from reaching Japanese shores by Japan’s “own efforts;” neutralisation of external threats by improving international security architecture with cooperation from allies; and global peace and stability by cooperation with international community” in a consolidated manner.

It is clear that China's self-avowed "peaceful rise" has hardly been “peaceful.” That too so early in its journey towards superpower status. Japan has started reaching out to major powers and embarked upon a substantive and sustained upgradation of its security and defence ties with India, Australia, South Korea and Vietnam. India and Australia will be the keys for Japan. Japan needs to take lead and revive the Quadrilateral Initiative (Japan, US, Australia and India) -- a strategic baby that was conceived in 2007 and aborted in early 2008. Australia had then acted as the party spoiler, apparently at the behest of China.

China is realising that its assertive diplomacy and aggressive military manoeuvring have set the cat among the pigeons and is keen to make amends. It sent Premier Wen Jiabao to India (December 15-17) even after India’s Oslo rebuff to China on December 10 when the Indian envoy in Norway did attend the Nobel peace prize award-giving ceremony despite China’s request to India to skip the function. China has declared its plans to revive military-to-military relations with the US after a year-long suspension of the ties.

However, this is too little, too late. China needs to show to the world that it is a responsible, restrained and mature global power and not a fire-spewing dragon.