On June 1, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian stated once more, why China is so alarmed at Japan’s full steam-ahead thrust to militarily re-arm and to work with NATO, even though it is restricted from doing so by international agreements and by its own Constitution.
At the Shangri-La Dialogue, the Asian defense summit that took place from May 29 to May 31, this year in Singapore, Japan’s Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi denounced China, saying that it had a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons and strategic bombers, yet Japan is labeled for its neo-militarism. A reporter asked “What is China’s comment on [Koizumi’s] remarks?”
China’s Lin Jian responded: after saying that “the remarks from the Japanese official you mentioned have no basis at all. They have zero authority in front of history,” Lin stated that both the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam declaration, declare that Japan should never be allowed to build up a defense rearmament again. He cited the shocking actual state of the Japanese military level today: “Today, … Japan’s latest defense budget has exceeded 9 trillion yen [$56.3 billion]…. Its defense spending per capita has reached three times that of China, and total defense expenditure has surged to 2 percent of GDP with plans to further go up to 3.5 percent. Military orders from the [Japan] Ministry of Defense have tripled over the past five years. Since the current administration [of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi] came to power, it has been accelerating the deployment of intermediate and long-range missiles, easing the export restrictions of lethal weapons, and promoting the revision of its Constitution and the three security documents. By doing so, Japan seeks to further breach the international and domestic laws and challenge the postwar international order.”
