Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lin Jian denounced the Japanese defense budget plan that the government in Tokyo announced yesterday. “Despite recent international criticism over latest military and security developments in Japan, the Japanese side has shown no inclination to mend its conduct, and instead plans to again hike [its] defense budget, further revealing Japanese right-wing forces’ motive to remilitarize Japan and resurrect militarism,” Lin said during a Foreign Ministry briefing yesterday. “Japan is deviating further and further away from the path of peaceful development and moving in a dangerous direction,” he added.
“In recent years, Japan has removed the ban on exercising the right to collective self-defense, developed the so-called ‘capability to strike enemy bases,’ strengthened cooperation on extended deterrence, and built its frontier islands into front lines, which clearly goes beyond Japan’s ‘exclusively defense-oriented’ policy,” Lin continued. “Terms such as ‘self-defense’ and ‘counterstrike’ are used by Japanese right-wing forces to gloss over their attempt to breach the postwar international order and stipulations in Japan’s Constitution, and deceive and stoke public opinion.”
“China will work with all peace-loving countries to push back any dangerous move designed to resurrect militarism or cultivate neo-militarism, and jointly defend the outcomes of WWII victory,” Lin concluded.
The proposed Japanese budget plan for 2026 is the fourth year of a five-year plan to double Japanese defense spending to 2 percent of GDP. Japanese defense spending has already increased from ¥5 trillion (about $32 billion) in 2022 to the ¥9 trillion proposed for 2026 as Japan seeks to “accelerate its defense transformation,” reported The Japan Times. The budget plan includes some ¥100 billion (about $640 million) to build a drone shield “to help defend the country’s southwestern periphery amid rising supposed concerns over Chinese military moves in the area. The budget requests ¥977 billion for standoff weapons, including ¥177 billion for an improved, longer-range version of the domestically made Type 12 ground-launched anti-ship missile. Deployments of those weapons in Japan are planned to begin before the current fiscal year concludes at the end of March.
More than ¥30 billion for the acquisition of hypersonic missiles and ¥73 billion for the development of the weapons is also being requested, with an aim of beginning production in fiscal 2026. The Defense Ministry is also planning to create a new office focused on “Pacific defense initiatives” that will “examine how to proceed with systems such as surveillance and monitoring” along the nation’s periphery and how to cooperate with other countries in the region.
