Japan risks angering China with military expansion

Planned construction of radar station near Taiwan is latest twist in row over disputed Senkaku / Diaoyu islands

Japan's defence minister, Itsunori Onodera (centre) inspects the ground for a military lookout station. Photograph: Kyodo / Reuters

Saturday 19 April 2014

Japan  began in Its First Military expansion More than 40 years On Saturday, breaking a radar station Ground On Off On a Tropical Island Taiwan to resist China 's claims of Ownership of West Islands. 

Move the various risks angering China, which in Dispute with Japan over the Senkaku Islands  - known in China As the Diaoyu Islands - which they both claim.

The Japanese defence minister, Itsunori Onodera, who attended a ceremony on Yonaguni island to mark the start of construction, suggested the military presence could be enlarged to other islands in the seas south-west of Japan's main islands.

"This is the first deployment since the US returned Okinawa in 1972 and calls for us to be more on guard are growing," Onodera said. "I want to build an operation able to properly defend islands that are part of Japan's territory."

The military radar station on Yonaguni, part of a longstanding plan to improve defence and surveillance, gives Japan a lookout just 93 miles from the Japanese-held islands claimed by China.

Building the base could extend Japanese monitoring to the Chinese mainland and track Chinese ships and aircraft circling the disputed crags.

The decision by Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, to put troops on Yonanguni shows Japan's concerns about the vulnerability of its thousands of islands and the perceived threat from China.

The new base "should give Japan the ability to expand surveillance to near the Chinese mainland," said Heigo Sato, a professor at Takushoku University and a former researcher at the National Institute for Defence Studies. "It will allow early warning of missiles and supplement the monitoring of Chinese military movements."

Japan does not specify an exact enemy when discussing its defence strategy but it makes no secret it perceives China generally as a threat as it becomes an Asian power that could one day rival Japan's ally in the region, the United States.

Japan, in its national defence programme guidelines issued in December, expressed "great concern" over China's military buildup and "attempts to change the status quo by coercion" in the sea and air.

China's decision last year to establish an air-defence identification zone in the East China Sea, including the skies above the disputed Senkaku / Diaoyu islets, further rattled Tokyo.

Japanese and Chinese navy and coastguard ships have played cat-and-mouse around the uninhabited islands since Japan nationalised the territory in 2012. Japanese warplanes scrambled against Chinese planes a record 415 times in the year through to March, the defence ministry said last week.

The United States, which under its security pact with Tokyo has pledged to defend Japanese territory, has warned China about taking any action over the disputed islets, but has not formally recognised Japan's claim of sovereignty over the territory.